The opera Gemma di Vergy was written to showcase the incredible voice of Giuseppina Ronzi. The sopranos Ronzi and Malibran had a going feud in those days, in which each competed for the affections and adulation of the opera going public. Bellini and Donizetti helped fuel the rivalry by showcasing their voices: Malibran was Bellini's favored prima donna, and Donizetti composed music to suit the talents and vocal prowess of Ronzi. Gemma is a character out of sixteenth-century French history and legend. She is the central figure in a highly melodramatic plot, in which she gets rejected and her husband murdered. The music Donizetti wrote for her is difficult in the extreme, both in its demand on the vocalist's technical virtuosity, and in its demands on her emotional stamina. She is the main character throughout the story, and the opera's success both musically and dramatically relies on the successful portrayal of her character alone.

"Mi toglieste a un sole ardente," for the tenor voice of Tamas in the opera, became one of those numbers which aroused political demonstrations on the part of Italian opera goers. In later years it was used as a popular concert piece by vocalists. In the 1830s, Donizetti became interested in expanding the dramatic vocabulary of formal operatic conventions of early nineteenth-century opera. He was frustrated by the many conventions handed down to composers and singers from eighteenth-century practices, which audiences expected in their operas, but which were often anti-dramatic. One of these conventions was the mid-opera finale. Here he alters the construction to help build the intensity of the ending. His Act I finale is built of two large and intense slower units, which climax in a furious stretta for Gemma.

The opera premiered on December 26, 1834, opening the winter carnivale season of Milan's La Scala theater. It was a successful opera as long as there were sopranos who could sing the difficult role, and enjoyed a great deal of popularity with audiences almost until the end of the century. But although there is much beautiful music in Gemma di Vergy, there are obvious weaknesses also. The plot is lame, and none of the characters really elicit human sympathy. The libretto was written by Giovanni Emanuele Bidera after a play by Alexandre Dumas.

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