A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Romani, Felice
ROMANI, Felice, a famous Italian littérateur, born at Genoa, January 31, 1788. He was educated for the law, but soon forsook it for more congenial pursuits, and was in early life appointed to the post of poet to the royal theatres, with a salary of 6000 lire. The fall of the French government in Italy drove him to his own resources. He began with a comedy, 'L'Amante e l'Impostore,' which was very successful, and the forerunner of many dramatic pieces. But his claim to notice in a dictionary of music rests on his opera-librettos, in which he was for long the favourite of the Italian composers. For Simone Mayer he wrote 'Medea' (1812), 'La Rosa bianca e la Rosa rossa,' and others; for Rossini, 'Aureliano in Palmira,' and 'Il Turco in Italia'; for Bellini, 'Bianca e Faliero,' 'La Straniera,' 'La Sonnambula,' 'Il Pirata,' 'Norma,' 'I Capuletti,' and 'Beatrice di Tenda'; for Donizetti, 'Lucrezia,' 'Anna Bolena,' 'L'Elisir d'amore,' and 'Parisina'; for Mercadante, 'Il Conte d'Essex'; for Ricci, 'Un Avventura di Scaramuccia'; and many others, in all fully a hundred. As editor for many years of the 'Gazzetta Piemontese,' he was a voluminous writer.
In the latter part of his life he became blind, and was pensioned by government, and spent his last years in his family circle at Moneglia, on the Riviera, where he died full of years and honours, January 28, 1865.[ G. ]