s illustrated by the interesting
circumstances of his saving an obscure Neapolitan theatre from ruin.
Hearing that it was on the verge of suspension and the performers
in great distress, the composer sought them out and supplied their
immediate wants. The manager said a new work from the pen of Donizetti
would be his salvation. "You shall have one within a week," was the
answer.

Lacking a subject, he himself rearranged an old French vaudeville, and
within the week the libretto was written, the music composed, the parts
learned, the opera performed, and the theatre saved. There could be no
greater proof of his generosity of heart and his versatility of talent.
In these days of bitter quarreling over the rights of authors in their
works, it may be amusing to know that Victor Hugo contested the rights
of Italian librettists to borrow their plots from French plays. When
"Lucrezia Borgia," composed for Milan in 1834, was produced at Paris
in 1840, the French poet instituted a suit for an infringement of
copyright. He gained his action, and "Lucrezia Borgia" became "La
Rinegata," Pope Alexander the Sixth's Italians being metamorphosed into
Turks.*

* Victor Hugo did the same thing with Verdi's "Ernani," and
other French authors followed with legal actions. The matter
was finally arranged on condition of an indemnity being paid
to the original French dramatists. The principle involved
had been established nearly two centuries before. In a
privilege granted to St. Amant in 1653 for the publication
of his "Moise Sauve," it was forbidden to extract from that
epic materials for a play or poem. The descendants of
Beaumarchais fought for the same concession, and not very
long ago it was decided that the translators and arrangers
of "Le Nozze di Figaro" for the Theatre Lyrique must share
their receipts with the living representatives of the author
of "Le Mariage de Figaro."

"Lucrezia Borgia," which, though based on one of the most dramatic of
stories and full of beautiful music, is not dramatically treated by the
composer, seems to mark the distance about half way between the styles
of Rossini and Verdi. In it there is but little recitative, and in the
treatment of the chorus we find the method which Verdi afterward came to
use exclusively. When Donizetti revisited Paris in 1840 he produced in
rapid succession "I Martiri," "La Fille du Regiment," and "La Favorita.