Felice Romani

[3] At the University of Genoa he translated French literature and, with a colleague, prepared a six-volume dictionary of mythology and antiquities, including the history of the Celts in Italy.

After refusing a post at the University of Genoa, he appears to have travelled to France, Spain, Greece and Germany before returning to Milan in either 1812 or 1813.

Romani wrote the librettos for Bellini's Il pirata, La straniera, Zaira, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La sonnambula, Norma and Beatrice di Tenda, for Rossini's Il turco in Italia and Bianca e Falliero, and Donizetti's Anna Bolena and L'elisir d'amore (which he adapted from Eugène Scribe's Le philtre).

He also wrote a libretto (originally for composer Adalbert Gyrowetz) that Verdi used for his early comedy Un giorno di regno.

Dramatic, even extravagant "situations" expressed in verses "designed to portray the passions in the liveliest manner" was what Bellini was looking for in a libretto, according to a letter to Francesco Florimo, of 4 August 1834, and he found them in Romani.