Gaetano Donizetti studied under Padre Stanislao Mattei at the Bologna Musical Lyceum during the years 1815–1817. After receiving initial musical training in Bergamo, Donizetti was sent to Bologna with letters of recommendation from Simon Mayr, and there he was accepted to study musical structure and composition under Mattei, who was already renowned as a distinguished pedagogue and successor to Padre Martini.
During his period of study in Bologna, Donizetti worked in Mattei’s composition class, where he completed early operatic exercises such as Il Pigmalione (1816) and parts of Olympiade and L’ira d’Achille (1817), works described by scholars as characteristic of a student in training. Mattei’s instruction in counterpoint and composition formed a significant part of Donizetti’s formal musical education before he returned to Bergamo in 1817.
