AllMovie

Amedeo Nazzari portrays famed Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti in this expansive biopic. Told in flashback, the story is essentially of one who is lucky in music, unlucky in love. Poor Donizetti always manages to link up with a woman who is all wrong for him; one of his desultory amours lands him in an insane asylum, at the behest of a cuckolded Austrian prince. According to The Life of Donizetti, his greatest compositions were inspired by the tragic self-sacrifice of the true love of his life. Oddly, there is very little of Donizetti's music on the sound track; the filmmakers seemed more interested in the man's sex life than his more lasting contributions to humanity.