Busoni was at the Berlin premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Falstaff" in April 1893. The result was to force on him a re-evaluation of the potential of Italian musical traditions which he had so far ignored in favour of the German traditions, and in particular the models of Brahms and the orchestral techniques of Liszt and Wagner. Busoni immediately began to draft an adulatory letter to Verdi (which he never summoned the courage to send), in which he addressed him as "Italy's leading composer" and "one of the noblest persons of our time", and in which he explained that ""Falstaff" provoked in me such a revolution of spirit that I can ... date the beginning of a new epoch in my artistic life from that time."