own in the collegio and visits to the Teatro di San Carlo on Thursdays and Sundays, where he saw his first opera by Rossini, Semiramide. While Weinstock gives an account of how he was "clearly captivated by the music of Rossini [and] put Rossini on a pedestal", he relates that, returning from Semiramide Bellini was unusually quiet and then "suddenly exclaimed to his companions, 'Do you know what I think? After Semiramide, it's futile for us to try and achieve anything!'" But a tougher challenge confronted the young composer: how to win the hand of young Maddalena Fumarolis, whom he had met as a guest in her home and to whom he had become music tutor. As their affair became obvious to her parents, they were forbidden to see each other. Bellini was determined to obtain the parents' permission for them to marry, and some writers regard this as the propelling reason for his writing his first opera. Adelson e Salvini The impetus to write this opera came about in late summer of 1824, when his primo maestrino status at the conservatory resulted in an assignment to compose an opera for presentation in the institute's teatrino. This became Adelson e Salvini, an opera semi-seria (half-serious) to a libretto by the Neapolitan Andrea Leone Tottola, who had written the one for Donizetti's La zingara. Adelson was first given sometime between mid-January and mid-March 1825, and featured an all-male cast of fellow students. It proved to be so popular among the student body that it was performed every Sunday for a year. With that achievement behind him, it is believed that the young Bellini, who had been away from home for six years, set out for Catania to visit his family. However, some sources attribute the visit to 1824, others to 1825. However, it is known that he was back in Naples by the summer or early autumn of 1825 in order to fulfill a contract to write an opera for the San Carlo or one of the other royal theatres, the Teatro Fondo. Beginnings of a career Following the presentation of Adelson e Salvini and while he was in Milan, Bellini—requesting help from Florimo—began to make some revisions, expanding the opera to two acts in the hope that it might be given stagings by Domenico Barbaja, the Intendant at the Teato di San Carlo since 1809. But little is known about