Left: Gaetano Donizetti, Right: Marshal Moncey
On May 5, [Gaetano] Donizetti was present at the ceremony memorializing Napoleon on the twentieth anniversary of his death. Writing to Antonio Vasselli on May 6, he said: “Yesterday (May 5) I went to the funeral service for the death of Napoleon. It was touching to see all those who served: some of them even had the uniforms of that period, moth-eaten, threadbare, frazzled; many had had them made new. They kissed the lid, the imperial crown; they wept, and Moncey, the oldest marshal, who is almost a hundred years old, was in dress uniform.”
Context: The year was 1841. Marshal Moncey passed away a year later in 1842.
Source: Herbert Weinstock, Donizetti and the World of Opera in Italy, Paris and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, pg. 167