However, Pedrotti's Lina, again with a libretto by Marcello, premiered in Verona in 1840 to a favourable reception by both the audience and the critics.

[2] In October 1859, after the French-Piedmontese troops had secured the city, Marcello moved to Milan where he spent the rest of his life.

[6] In 1865 Marcello's Italian translation of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine was heard throughout Italy and in London's Royal Opera House.

A friend then introduced him to the Swiss physician Jacques Etienne Chevalley de Rivaz who had practices in Naples and the island of Ischia where he owned a spa at Casamicciola.

Chevalley de Rivaz urged him to leave behind his ambitions and frenetic life in Naples and enter into his care at the spa.

Twenty years later he revised and published the poem with a lengthy dedication letter to Chevalley de Rivaz whom he credited with saving his life and being his "second father".