Donizetti composed I pazzi per progetto as part of an evening's entertainment at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, which was meant to benefit the composer. It is a short, one act farsa, which takes place in an insane asylum. It has interlocking love plots, and several of the cast members feign madness at various points in the play in order to gain their ends. Donizetti scored the opera for two soprano voices, and five buffo bass characters. The emphasis on buffo humor weighs down the work, and the satire is aimed at the antics of the mentally unstable. Domenico Gilardoni wrote the text to this opera, which was based on a play by Giovanni Carlo di Cosenza. He also drew on two other sources, a French farce called Une visite a Bedlam, and a libretto to an opera on the same subject by Bertini. Donizetti's opera premiered on February 6, 1830, and was a popular success, although it did not earn him a great deal of money. The King of Naples threw a ball on the same evening, and so the theater was half empty.

© Rita Laurance, All Music Guide