Abstract: This dissertation examines the meanings that Donizetti's operas acquired as they circulated in Naples during a single decade. I take the historical conditions of 1830s Naples as a premise, focusing attention onto the ways in which the period of optimism following the accession of Ferdinando II created new contexts for the performance and reception of Donizetti's operas. In the first chapter I explore the interaction between opera and the burgeoning public sphere of contemporary Naples. Examining the history of a private company set up to run the Royal Theaters, I demonstrate that the capitalist model of opera management, combined with a fad for petty speculation, meant that even relatively poor members of society began to take an interest in opera. I suggest that this resort to finance capitalism, together with the increased visibility of opera in public discourse, marks the consolidation of a discursive space for opera outside the opera house. Chapter 2 continues this examination of opera's increased social significance by considering the place of serious opera in Neapolitan society. Though serious (as opposed to buffa) works were traditionally restricted to the Royal Theaters, in 1834 legal changes meant that serious opera could now be staged in the less prestigious theaters (teatrini), and was hence accessible to a wider segment of Neapolitan society. I suggest that recent accounts stressing the privileged and exclusive nature of serious opera need nuancing when applied to Naples, where the variety of social contexts in which serious opera could circulate meant the existence of multiple levels of reception. The third chapter applies this framework to a case study: the performance of Donizetti's opera “Il furioso” at three Neapolitan theaters simultaneously in May 1834. The unusual phenomenon caught the imaginations of the city's inhabitants, and for a short period a large number of versions of “Il furioso” (including a prose play and several parodies) saturated Naples' theatrical life. I explore the anatomy of the Furioso craze, showing how the meanings of Donizetti's opera differed between the Royal Theater and the two teatrini; at the same time, I suggest that the reason the opera was so susceptible of these socially differentiated interpretations was that, as an opera semiseria, it explicitly thematized issues of class. Like Chapter 3, the fourth and fifth chapters deal with individual works by Donizetti, but focus more on Donizetti's own authorial presence. Chapter 4 considers “L'assedio di Calais.” Though the opera never circulated outside Naples, I suggest that it can be read in dialogue with contemporary Italian attitudes towards individualism, notably Mazzini's “Filosofia della musica.” Neapolitan audiences, however, appear not to have appreciated this aspect of the work. Chapter 5 deals with one of Donizetti's strangest operas, “Roberto Devereux.” Using newspaper reviews, I try to hear the work through the ears of contemporary audiences, exploring its unconventional representation of the operatic subject. In “Roberto,” as in “L'assedio,” I identify a degree of conflict between Donizetti's representational strategies and audiences' reactions, suggesting that Donizetti's aesthetic and the expectations of Neapolitan audiences diverge as the decade progresses.