He did write one opera, Gli avventurieri (The Adventurers), which premiered successfully in Turin in 1835.
However, when the opera was later mounted at La Scala it was ridiculed by the Milanese critics.
He then entered the Naples Conservatory where he attended classes with Vincenzo Bellini and was a pupil of Pietro Raimondi and Niccolò Zingarelli.
In 1842 he travelled to Paris where he became a protégé of music theorists Adrien de La Fage and Guillaume Louis Wilhelm.
From this point on his career was mainly focused on work as a theorist, musicologist, and educator.