One danger threatened him, however. Bergamo was under the Austrian domination and he was liable to do military duty. Unless the fear of this could be conjured away, he could not write with a free spirit, nor could he marry the woman he loved, Virginia Vasselli, because her father would not consent so long as his future was in doubt. Strong protestations were addressed to the Austrian ambassador in Rome, Mayer used his best efforts, an additional pretext was found in some slight physical defect, and Donizetti was relieved from the anxious peril. He could now pursue his art untrammeled, could form his domestic life as he desired and could unite himself with sympathetic friends. This independence, added to his natural activity, soon showed its effects in the further production of three operas in that same year, of which two were given in Naples--"La Zingara," a comic opera at the Nuovo, and "La Lettera Anonima," really a musical farce, at the Fondo--and "Chiara e Serafina" or "I Pirati," at the Scala, in Milan. No sooner was it understood that Donizetti was free and ready to write, than commissions were sent him from all the chief theatres of Italy. Rossini, Bellini, Pacini and Mercadante were all in a certain sense his rivals, and their names were often bulletined with his in the prospectuses of one or another season. But his genius preserved its individuality, and the charm of his music was so great that from this time forward the years were few in which only one or two operas were written by him, while during many twelvemonths he completed four and even five operas. Some of these were short, it is true, limited even to a single act, while others again are chronicled as mere farces in the records of the time; so, too, several seasons passed before he rose beyond the humorous disposition which had showed itself in mimicry and simple buffoonery during his school years and attempted a strictly serious or even a romantic subject. Therefore, although he was constantly writing for such important houses as the San Carlo, the Nuovo and the Fondo, in Naples; the Valle, in Rome; the Carlo Felice, in Genoa; and later for the Scala and the Carcano, in Milan; the catalogue of these works presents an array of names unfamiliar to any but systematic students of musical literature. There are indications, here and there, that his reading of books was wider than that of some of his contemporaries and that there was springing up in him a preference for historical subjects, as well as that interest in the novels of Walter Scott which ultimately became almost a passion with him. "La Regina de Golconda," "Jeanne di Calais," "Il Castello di Kenilworth," "Francesca di Foix," "Imelda dei Lambertazzi" and "Anna Bolena" are titles which appear between 1828 and 1831, while it is recorded that he composed in 1830 an oratorio about the deluge.