In the late 1830s and early ’40s Gaetano Donizetti had gone through years of grief and bad health. In 1843 his comic opera Don Pasquale became an instant international success, and a year later Donizetti wrote another opera, Caterina Cornaro. When it failed, he was quick to take the blame. He wrote to a friend:
A fiasco! Then let it be a fiasco! People are saying that the music of Caterina Cornaro is not mine or that I wrote it in my sleep or that I wrote it to wreak revenge against the management. No!
I accept complete responsibility, failure, and blame. Why should I have had somebody else compose it? Perhaps because I did not have enough time? Because I was asleep? Perhaps because it’s not easy for me to work? For revenge? Could I be so ungrateful to a public which has put up with me for so many years?
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No! Maybe genius, experience, and taste deceived me, or maybe I lack them completely. But descend to loathsome things, sleights of hand–never! I would have thought that certain pieces should not have stirred up so much commotion–for example, the duets, the quartet….
But what’s the point of mentioning it now? All I do is to pour out fresh blood from an old wound.
Donizetti was equally forthright in a letter to another friend:
You will have read about the fiasco of my Catarina in Naples? It hurts me a good deal because I thought I had composed something worthwhile. It hurts to lose the effort of a few months, but it’s the same rule for everyone, and I bow my head in humility.
He was in the twilight of his life, but a few months later Gaetano Donizetti would find a triumph in the Naples revival of his opera Maria di Rohan.
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