Those words and that music appropriately could find their way into critical moments of the films. Consider, for example, the situation at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Han Solo is frozen in carbonite. Luke has lost his hand in combat with Darth Vader. The home planet, Alderaan, has been obliterated long ago.
Evil is everywhere triumphant.
The Italian public who first heard Nabucco in 1842 had similar feelings. Italy was not a unified country, but only a series of states, some of which were ruled by foreign powers. Censorship prevented open campaigns for Italian unification, but when Verdi wrote music for bygone Hebrew slaves on the banks of the Euphrates, his fellow Italians understood what he meant. Nabucco became a great anthem of the Italian risorgimento , or reawakening. The power of myth pervades our lives and helps us make sense of our experience.