On Donizetti's return to Naples in April 1835 he and Virginia packed up their belongings and on 3 May they moved into new quarters on an upper floor at Via Corsea, no. 65, over the Aquila Nera inn. The turmoil of changing apartments, however, was nothing compared to the confusion resulting from the mismanagement of the Neapolitan opera houses by the royal commission. Signs of trouble had been clear the previous year, at the time of the prohibition of Maria Stuarda, when the censors' interference, as well as the king's own non fiat, had resulted in works being abandoned after they had been rehearsed, others dropped from the repertory to which they had earlier been admitted, and still others, although they had been successfully produced elsewhere, regarded as unfit for the Neapolitan stage. It is obvious, too, that at this time there was insufficient discipline in the conduct of performances.

A letter of 3 January 1835 from the Neapolitan music-publisher Guillaume Cottrau to his sister in Paris gives a vivid picture of the careless way things were being done.