Anna Bolena. With this opera seria in two acts Donizetti emerged at long last as one of the leading operatic composers of his day. The traditional view of Anna Bolena as a sudden leap into excellence, as the point at which, all at once, Donizetti discarded his older derivative style, is highly misleading. Rather it is the logical culmination of all his previous experience. The appreciable amount of his earlier music that he adapted for Anna Bolena, music from Otto mesi, Il paria and Imelda as well as Enrico di Borgogna, argues for a consistent and steady development rather than a radically new departure.

Anna Bolena richly deserved its success, and part of it was due to the exceptionally favorable circumstances under which it was composed. For the first time Donizetti had a satisfactory libretto from Felice Romani. The two Romani texts he had set earlier, the hopeless semiseria Chiara e Serafina and the elegant but old-fashioned buffa Alina, were not in the same class as the libretto for Anna, whose superiority lies in its clear focus upon its tragic heroine and in its opportunities for pathos and for clearly motivated interaction. A great advantage to Donizetti during the period of composing Anna was the friendly co-operation of Pasta who was to be the prima donna.