Soon after his arrival in Rome, Donizetti delivered Mayr's letter of introduction to Jacopo Ferretti. Ferretti's apartment was a gathering-place for people interested in literature and music. Mayr could not have made a wiser choice of a man to befriend Donizetti on his first visit to Rome. Not only was Ferretti familiar with the cross-currents of the Roman opera stages, but he had a wide acquaintance among people whose support would prove valuable. To someone like Donizetti, whose experience as a composer had been confined to Bergamo and to the smaller theaters of Venice, it must have seemed that he had come into the mainstream of the operatic world. For if at that time Rome had no single theater with the special prestige of Milan's La Scala or of Naples's San Carlo, it could boast three important opera houses: the Argentina, the Valle, and the Apollo, the last of which had a tradition that extended back to 1671.

For the Carnival season of 1821–2 only two of these three Roman opera houses were open: the Valle was closed for remodeling. The buffa company that usually played at the Valle had moved into the Apollo, and opera seria held the stage at the Argentina; both companies were under the management of Giovanni Paterni, and both opened their seasons on the traditional date of 26 December (Santo Stefano).