Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848); ITA

Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848) was an Italian composer and one of the three great masters of bel canto opera alongside Rossini and Bellini. Born into a poor family in Bergamo, he received crucial early training at the charitable music school founded by Johann Simon Mayr, who recognized his talent and helped him continue his studies in Bologna. Donizetti’s first operas appeared while he was still in his twenties, and his remarkable speed and theatrical instinct eventually produced a catalogue of roughly seventy operas. He worked extensively in Naples and achieved international success in Milan, Paris, Vienna, and other European centers. After years of extraordinary productivity and personal tragedy, including the deaths of his wife and children, serious illness ended his career. He returned to Bergamo shortly before his death at fifty.

Donizetti’s operas combine vocal brilliance with increasingly strong dramatic characterization and an instinctive command of theatrical pace. Lucia di Lammermoor is his most famous tragedy, its celebrated mad scene uniting virtuoso coloratura with psychological intensity. The comedies L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale balance lyrical warmth, rhythmic vitality, and sharply drawn characters, while La fille du régiment demonstrates his mastery of French opéra comique. Historical dramas such as Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda helped establish a new intensity in Romantic Italian opera. Donizetti expanded the expressive role of the orchestra and loosened inherited formal conventions while preserving the primacy of the singing voice. His work formed an essential bridge from Rossini and Bellini to the more dramatically integrated operas of Verdi, and his finest works remain central to the international operatic repertory.

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Donizetti, Gaetano (b Bergamo, 1797; d Bergamo, 1848). It. composer, principally of operas. Pupil of Mayr at Bergamo and of Padre Mattei at Bologna. His Enrico di Borgogna was prod. Venice, 1818, and Zoraida di Granata was a success in Rome in 1822. In the next 8 years he wrote nearly 30 operas which were perf. throughout It. His first int. success was with Anna Bolena (1830), and this was followed by the comedy L'Elisir d'Amore (1832), and by his masterpiece Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). For Paris, 1840, he comp. the light-hearted La Fille du Régiment and the large-scale La Favorite. His last success was also in Paris, with Don Pasquale in 1843. Donizetti was prof. of counterpoint at Naples Cons. 1835-7, becoming dir. in 1837. He became paralysed and mentally unbalanced as a result of syphilis in 1844.

Donizetti's ability to write at great speed has prejudiced attitudes to the quality of his work. He wrote specifically for a generation of great singers such as Grisi, Mario, Lablache, and Tamburini. However, although he catered for their ability and agility, the tendency to underrate the melodic and dramatic content of his operas has only recently been corrected by a more discriminating willingness to recognize Donizetti's brilliance as a rival in comic opera to Rossini; and to acknowledge the debt, in the form of recognizable borrowings, owed to him by Verdi, who clearly appreciated his dramatic mastery. Recently several of Donizetti's lesser-known operas have been revived and found to have unsuspected merit. He also wrote church mus., 18 str. qts., and some orch. works. A list of his operas follows: 11 pigmalione (1816); L'ira d'Achille (1817); Enrico di Borgogna; Una follia (both 1818); Il falegname di Livonia; Le nozze in villa (both 1819); Zoraide di Granata; La zingara; La lettera anonima; Chiara e Serafina (all 1822); Il fortunato inganno; Alfredo il Grande (both 1823); L'ajo nell'imbarazzo; Emilia di Liverpool (both 1824); Alahor in Granata; Gabriella di Vergy (2nd version 1838); Elvida (all 1826); Olivo e Pasquale; Il borgomastro di Saardam; Le convenienze teatrali (2nd version, Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali, 1831), Otto mesi in due ore (all 1827); Alina, regina di Golconda; Gianni di Calais; L'esule di Roma (all 1828); Il Giovedì Grasso; Il Paria; Elisabetta al castello di Kenilworth (all 1829); Il diluvio universale; I pazzi per progetto; Imelda de' Lambertazzi; Anna Bolena (all 1830); Gianni di Parigi; La Romanziera e l'uomo nero; Francesca di Foix (all 1831); Fausta; Ugo, conte di Parigi; L'elisir d'amore; Sancia di Castiglia (all 1832); Il furioso all'isola di San Domingo; Parisina; Torquato Tasso; Lucrezia Borgia (all 1833); Rosmonda d'Inghilterra; Gemma di Vergy (both 1834); Marino Faliero; Lucia di Lammermoor; Maria Stuarda (all 1835); Belisario; Il campanello di notte; L'assedio di Calais; Betly (all 1836); Roberto Devereux; Pia de' Tolomei (both 1837); Poliuto (2nd version, Les martyrs, 1840); Maria di Rudenz; Elisabetta di Siberia (all 1838); Le Duc d'Albe (incomplete, 1839); La Fille du régiment; La Favorite (rev. and expansion of L'ange de Nisida of 1839) (both 1840); Adelia, o La Figlia dell'arciere; Rita, ou le mari battu; Maria Padilla (all 1841); Linda di Chamounix; Caterina Cornaro (both 1842); Don Pasquale; Maria di Rohan; Dom Sébastien, roi de Portugal (all 1843).

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