Gaetano Donizetti

Italian composer

• Born: November 29, 1797
• Birthplace: Bergamo, Cisalpine Republic (now in Italy)
• Died: April 8, 1848
• Place of death: Bergamo, Austrian Empire (now in Italy)

Donizetti was the most prolific composer of Italian operas during the first half of the nineteenth century. Although his works are uneven in quality, he was, at his best, the greatest and most vital exponent of Italian Romanticism before Giuseppe Verdi.

Early Life

Gaetano Donizetti (dahn-ih-ZEHT-ee) was the fifth of six children born to Andrea and Domenica Nava Donizetti. He was born in a basement apartment, where, according to his later recollection, “no glimmer of light ever penetrated.” His father, who discouraged him from pursuing a career as a composer, followed no particular trade; after 1808, he earned a miserable existence as the janitor of the local pawnshop.

In 1806, a free music school was established in Bergamo under the direction of Johann Simon Mayr. The eight-year-old Donizetti was one of the first students to enroll in the institution which would later bear his name (Istituto Musicale Gaetano Donizetti), and he continued his studies there until 1814. Donizetti’s extraordinary fluency in composition in later years was a result at least in part of the rigorous training of Mayr, himself a successful composer of Italian operas.

At Mayr’s urging, Donizetti went to Bologna to study counterpoint and fugue at the Liceo Filarmonico, then perhaps the most distinguished music school in Italy. His master in Bologna was the highly erudite Padre Mattei, who had formerly taught Gioacchino Rossini. Though Mattei did not inspire affection, Donizetti applied himself vigorously to the study of the contrapuntal forms; sixty-one exercises in his hand survive in manuscript.

Donizetti returned to Bergamo in 1817. Working with that facility and ease that was to mark his entire career, Donizetti composed four operas during a period of four years and a large body of nonoperatic works. In the latter category, Donizetti composed eighteen string quartets; though modest, these works have a certain vernal charm. Donizetti was also forced at this time to devote considerable energy to the avoidance of military service. With the help of a woman who admired his talent, Donizetti was able to purchase an exemption in 1818.

Donizetti had by this time matured into a well-favored young man. His passport of 1821 describes him as tall and slender, with blue eyes and chestnut hair; associates found him to be handsome, generous, and charming. As a young man, Donizetti was high-spirited; later, personal tragedies caused a melancholia to descend upon him.

Life’s Work

Donizetti’s career as a composer of opera was firmly launched in 1822, with the success of a serious opera in Rome. Donizetti was next offered a commission by the Teatro Nuovo in Naples. Then the most robust operatic center in Italy, Naples had been dominated musically by Rossini since 1815. Donizetti’s first offering to the Neapolitan public, the semiserious opera La zingara (1822) was an immense success. For the next several years, Donizetti made Naples the base of his activities; like all successful opera composers of his day, however, he was forced to travel frequently.

Though none of the operas before Anna Bolena (1830) has maintained a place in the active repertory, Donizetti was stunningly productive during the fifteen-year span from 1822 to 1837. Donizetti completed forty-nine operas in this remarkably fertile period. All the subgenres of Italian opera are represented in the canon of Donizetti’s works: opera buffa (comic opera), opera seria (serious opera), and opera semiseria.

Donizetti relied largely on the formal conventions of Italian opera as established by Rossini. Most of the scenes in Donizettian opera are reducible ultimately to an opening recitative (rapid declamation of text) and a section in a brisk tempo (tempo d’attacco), in which the dramatic situation is presented; a slow reflective aria; an interruption of mood in a faster tempo (tempo di mezzo); and a brisk concluding section replete with vocal fireworks (cabaletta). This formula could be applied to ensembles as well as to solo scenes; in the former case, the brilliant concluding passage was called the stretto.

Donizetti deployed the basic pattern in an infinite variety of ways; moreover, in his intuitive understanding of its dramatic potential, he surpassed Rossini. Donizetti was not an inventive harmonist, and his scoring sometimes consisted of the simplest accompaniment patterns repeated shamelessly; yet in dramatic pacing, in the creation of adrenaline-charged melodies, and in sheer élan, he had few peers.

Though earlier works had given ample indications of a strong talent, Donizetti did not reach artistic maturity until the composition of Anna Bolena. This work marks the ascendancy of the full-blooded Romantic melodrama in Italian opera. Anna Bolena is one of four Donizettian operas based on Tudor history. Donizetti created a score of great power and emotional sincerity. The work also marks the beginning of a preoccupation on the part of Italian composers with libretti that depict fallible women, in this case Anne Boleyn, in pitiable circumstances. In the moving final scene, in which Boleyn is alternately delirious and lucid before her execution, Donizetti offers a foretaste of the famous “mad scene” from his later opera Lucia di Lammermoor (1835).

Anna Bolena brought Donizetti international acclaim, and it probably marked the peak of his personal fortunes as well. Donizetti had been married, in 1828, to Virginia Vasselli. By all accounts, the union was a happy one. During the 1830’s, however, three children born to them died in infancy, and in 1837, Virginia died of cholera. Donizetti never fully recovered from these losses, though he remained artistically productive for several years after Virginia’s death.

The years between 1830 and 1837 constituted the zenith of Donizetti’s career as a composer of Italian opera. In a series of striking works, including Parisina (1833), Lucrezia Borgia (1833), Marino Faliero (1835), Lucia di Lammermoor, and Roberto Devereux (1837), Donizetti solidified his achievement in the genre of the melodramma and also composed a comic opera of enduring charm in L’elisir d’amore (1832; the elixir of love). Lucrezia Borgia, an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s play by Felice Romani, is a lurid drama steeped in violence and touching upon incest; in its sensationalism and explosiveness, Donizetti’s setting adumbrates the Verismo opera school of the end of the century. Donizetti also happened upon a new musical texture for the setting of conversation in this work: The characters Rustighello and Astolfo chat in recitative in act 1, while a portentous motive sings in the orchestra (a device often credited to Verdi). Marino Faliero, with text supplied by Emanuele Bidera based indirectly on Lord Byron, prefigures Verdi’s I due Foscari (1844) and Simon Boccanegra (1857) in its Venetian local color and its liberal political undercurrents. Roberto Devereux is the last of Donizetti’s forays into Tudor history; his musical portrait of Elizabeth I in this work is one of his finest.

Lucia di Lammermoor has proved to be Donizetti’s most durable work. It was his first collaboration with the distinguished librettist Salvatore Cammarano, and their joint effort is regarded by many as the touchstone of the entire bel canto repertory (as the works of Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, Donizetti, and their contemporaries are collectively known).

In the final phase of his compositional career from 1838 to 1845, Donizetti was drawn into the orb of Parisian grand opera. He composed four operas to French texts for the stages of Paris; of these, the comic La fille du régiment (1840; the daughter of the regiment) and the serious La favorite (1840) became repertory staples. Donizetti’s greatest achievement in the category of Italian opera buffa was also written for a foreign commission: His comic masterpiece Don Pasquale (1843) was written for the Théâtre Italien in Paris. Two serious operas with Italian texts, Linda di Chamounix (1842) and Maria di Rohan (1843), were commissioned by a Viennese theater.

Donizetti’s life was rapidly approaching its own tragic denouement. In 1844, Donizetti began to show unmistakable symptoms of the last stages of syphilis. His condition deteriorated to the point where institutionalization was required in 1846. In 1848, Donizetti died in Bergamo.

Significance

It was Gaetano Donizetti’s misfortune to be the middle child in the family of nineteenth century Italian opera composers, preceded and followed by the more towering figures of Rossini and Verdi. Donizetti’s primitive orchestrations and predictable melodic formulas were seen as tokens of his inferiority. A later generation of scholars has by contrast marveled at the professional standard Donizetti maintained given the conditions under which he worked. More detailed knowledge of his works has also bred increased respect; many effects associated with Verdi (or known through Sir Arthur Sullivan’s parodies) have been found to be the products of Donizetti’s imagination.

Appreciation of Donizetti’s contribution has also been retarded by a lack of understanding of the subgenre in which he did his finest work, the melodramma. Modern critics have realized that the melodramma should not be judged according to the dramaturgical standards of a later generation. Texts that struck later generations as ludicrous were understood by Donizetti and his colleagues to be mere verbal semaphores reinforcing the profound emotional content of the music. Donizetti’s role in the creation of the melodramma earns for him an honored place in the company of Victor Hugo, Hector Berlioz, and the other innovators who dismantled the edifice of artistic classicism.

Donizetti’s Operas

1822

• La zingara

1830

• Anna Bolena

1832

• L elisir d amore (The Elixir of Love)

1833

• Lucrezia Borgia

1833

• Parisina

1835

• Lucia di Lammermoor

1835

• Marino Faliero

1837

• Roberto Devereux

1840

• Elisabeth

1840

• La favorite

1840

• La fille du régiment

1842

• Linda di Chamounix

1843

• Don Pasquale

1843

• Maria di Rohan

Bibliography

Ashbrook, William. Donizetti and His Operas. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982. The definitive work in English on Donizetti. Part 1 offers biographical information; part 2 provides analytic comment on all of his operas. Appendixes supply synopses and information about Donizetti’s librettists.

Ashbrook, William, and Julian Budden. “Gaetano Donizetti.” In The New Grove Masters of Italian Opera. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983. Concise account of Donizetti’s life and valuable analytic commentary by two first-rate scholars of Italian opera. Contains the most accurate catalog of Donizetti’s works available.

Glascow, E. Thomas. “Quarter Notes.” (Editorial) The Opera Quarterly 14, no. 3 (Spring, 1998). Discusses Donizetti’s prolific career and the criticism he sustained for producing “superficial” works.

Gossett, Philip.“Anna Bolena” and the Artistic Maturity of Gaetano Donizetti. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Detailed discussion of Anna Bolena, the watershed work in Donizetti’s career. Gossett offers a revisionist view of Donizetti’s achievement.

Gossett, Philip, and E. Thomas Glasow. “Donizetti: European Composer.” The Opera Quarterly 14, no. 3 (Spring, 1998). Profile of Donizetti focusing on his time in Paris.

Osborne, Charles. The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini. Portland, Oreg.: Amadeus Press, 1994. Osborne provides musical analyses of all of Donizetti’s 69 operas; he also describes the circumstances of each opera’s first performance and explains the opera’s libretto and plot. Includes a bibliography and discography.

Weinstock, Herbert. Donizetti and the World of Opera in Italy, Paris, and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Pantheon Books, 1963. Full-length study of Donizetti’s life aimed at a popular audience. Slightly out of date given the increase in scholarly interest in Donizetti, but highly readable.