Don Gregorio is the Neapolitan adaptation that Donizetti worked on his own L'ajo nell'imbarazzo , an opera first staged at the Teatro Valle in Rome on 4th February 1824. The subject was based on the play of the same name by Giovanni Giraud and the libretto of the original version was drawn up by Jacopo Ferretti, one of the Italy's leading librettists in the early nineteenth century. When Donizetti set to work on his Neapolitan version two years later, he was assisted by Andrea Leone Tottola whom he already worked with some of his operas.
Although some of the traditional passages were replaced by prose dialogue, a new numbers were added and others eliminated, Don Gregorio was still successful when it premiered on 11th June 1826 at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples.