Gaetano Donizetti
Born in a basement where not a single ray of light reached, he lit up the 19th-century stage with nearly seventy operas.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people around him ⏳🌊
- TeacherSimone Mayr
His lifelong teacher, who took the poor boy into his free school, taught him Haydn·Mozart, and opened the way for him to study abroad.
- InfluenceGioachino Rossini
He was the model for the early style, and later showed his trust by bringing him to Paris and handing him the baton for the Stabat Mater in Bologna.
- FamilyVirginia Vasselli
His wife, married in 1828; having outlived all their children, she died in 1837 at twenty-eight.
- RivalryVincenzo Bellini
A rival in the same theater and the same season; after his death Donizetti wrote a requiem in his memory.
- InfluenceGiuseppe Verdi
A younger composer whom Donizetti introduced by leading the staging of Nabucco in Vienna; he carried Donizetti's dramatic idiom forward.
I. The cellar in Bergamo · 1797–1815 (age 0–18)
(Cellar) He was born on November 29, 1797, in Bergamo, in northern Italy. It was the year the Venetian Republic, which had long ruled Bergamo, collapsed and a new republic rose under the influence of the French revolutionary army. His father, Andrea, worked as caretaker of a pawnshop, and his mother, Domenica Nava, is said to have been a weaver. The fifth of six children, he grew up in a rented half-basement room in Borgo Canale, outside the city walls. Years later he would recall that he had been born beneath a cellar staircase where not a single ray of light ever reached. (Brother) His eldest brother, Giuseppe, ten years his senior, became a military bandsman and served in Napoleon's army. In a household of slender means, music was one of the few livelihoods within reach, and the brothers grew up with that path before their eyes. (Charity school) In 1806 Simone Mayr, the German-born composer who was maestro di cappella of Bergamo Cathedral, opened a free music school for poor children. Nine-year-old Gaetano was among its first pupils. When his breaking voice turned unsteady, there was talk of sending him away, but Mayr recognized his talent and kept him on. (Teacher) Mayr was a musician who deeply revered Haydn and Mozart. From him the boy learned the quartets and symphonies of the Viennese classical school, and took in literature and general culture as well. In 1811 he played the lead in Il piccolo compositore di musica, a farce Mayr wrote for his students, revealing a cheerful temperament full of wit. In 1815 Mayr resolved to send him somewhere larger and helped raise the money for his studies away from home.
II. From Bologna to Naples · 1815–1827 (age 18–30)
(Counterpoint) Beginning in 1815, he spent two years in Bologna studying counterpoint with Padre Stanislao Mattei. This was the very teacher who had taught Rossini, a strict man of few words. During this period he wrote his first opera, Il Pigmalione, but it never reached the stage in his lifetime. (Quartets) Back home in 1817, he wrote string quartet after string quartet for the chamber-music circle around Mayr. Some eighteen of these quartets survive, steeped in the Haydnesque idiom Mayr had planted in him. He was able to avoid military service, it is said, only because a noblewoman patron paid the exemption fee on his behalf. (Debut) In 1818 he made his theatrical debut in Venice with Enrico di Borgogna, and in 1822 Zoraida di Granata, mounted at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, won acclaim. This success brought him into partnership with Domenico Barbaja, the powerful Neapolitan impresario. The contract was a grueling one that demanded several works a year, and he shuttled ceaselessly among Naples·Rome·Milan. (Rossini) Italian opera in those years belonged to Rossini. The young Donizetti's early works faithfully followed Rossini's florid, ornamented melodies and buoyant rhythms, and critics often dismissed him as a Rossini imitator. (Palermo) From 1825 into the following year he served as music director of the Teatro Carolino in Palermo, Sicily. His salary never came on time and the company's standard was low, and letter after letter overflowed with his complaints. It was a period in which a quick hand and the pressures of daily life together hardened him.
III. Virginia and Anna Bolena · 1828–1834 (age 31–37)
(Marriage) In June 1828 he married Virginia Vasselli, daughter of a Roman family of lawyers, and set up house in Naples. Her brother Antonio, nicknamed Toto, became his most intimate friend for life, and the two exchanged hundreds of letters. Most of what we know today of his inner life we owe to those letters. (Son) In 1829 their first son, Filippo, was born but died before he was two weeks old. It was the couple's first loss. (Breakthrough) In December 1830 Anna Bolena, set to a libretto by Felice Romani, premiered at the Teatro Carcano in Milan. The great Giuditta Pasta sang Henry VIII's cast-off queen, and the work soon spread to London and Paris. For the first time, here was his own voice, out of Rossini's shadow. (Bellini) In the same theater, in the same season, Bellini's La sonnambula took the stage. In his letters Bellini often betrayed his wariness of Donizetti, yet there is almost no record of Donizetti disparaging Bellini. The rivalry sharpened them both. (Speed) The 1832 comedy L'elisir d'amore is said to have been finished in a matter of weeks, and in 1833 he staged Lucrezia Borgia at La Scala. In 1834, after the two prima donnas came to actual blows during rehearsals of Maria Stuarda in Naples, the production was banned by royal order, and the music had to be transplanted onto a different plot.
His first international success, written in the period just after his marriage when he lost his first son; in the abandoned queen's final scene, his gift for painting tragedy in song emerged in full for the first time.
- In the final scene Anna, her mind clouding, recalls the castle of her childhood and sings “Al dolce guidami” (Lead me to that dear place). A slow melody with little ornament, it lays the singer's breath and tone bare.
- In the passage that follows, a tune resembling the English song “Home! Sweet Home!” drifts by, quietly hinting at the setting of an English queen.
- When distant cannon and bells announce the wedding of the king and his new queen, Anna hurls her curse in the fast, furious closing number (cabaletta) “Coppia iniqua” (Wicked pair). Listen for the reversal from slow resignation into rage.
- Callas's 1957 performance of the role at La Scala is counted as the event that revived this fading work.
Said to have been finished in a few weeks, this comedy shows both the quick hand of a composer who had to write without pause and his knack for mixing tears into laughter.
- The Act 2 tenor aria “Una furtiva lagrima” (A furtive tear) opens with a lonely solo for a single bassoon. Over a harp accompaniment that unfolds each chord one note at a time (broken chords, arpeggio), the heart of a guileless young man pours out.
- Within the same aria, at the moment the dark minor turns to bright major, Nemorino's joy at being sure of her love becomes audible.
- The itinerant quack Dulcamara's “Udite, udite, o rustici” (Hear me, hear me, villagers) is a song of rapid-fire words (patter), its highlight the bass's nimble tongue and comic acting.
IV. Lucia, and an empty house · 1835–1838 (age 38–41)
(Paris) In early 1835, at Rossini's invitation, he staged Marino Faliero at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. That same season Bellini's I puritani drew the greater applause, and he had to step back from his first Parisian venture. (Lucia) On September 26 of that year, Lucia di Lammermoor, based on Walter Scott's novel, premiered at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. The libretto was by Salvadore Cammarano, who would become his long-time partner. When belated news arrived that Bellini had died outside Paris three days earlier, at thirty-three, he wrote a requiem in memory of his old rival. (Loss) The two years that followed were cruel. His father and mother died one after the other at the end of 1835 and the start of the next year, and the children born in 1836 and 1837 did not survive. On July 30, 1837, in cholera-stricken Naples, his wife Virginia died at twenty-eight. He wrote to Toto asking what he was working for, with no parents, no wife, no children. (Elizabeth) In Roberto Devereux, premiered three months later, Elizabeth I, having sent the man she loves to the scaffold, cries out as though collapsing. From this time on, it is said, he left Virginia's room exactly as it was. (Censorship) He even served as acting director of the Naples Conservatory, but the permanent post went to Mercadante. In 1838 Poliuto, which depicts a saint's martyrdom, was banned by the king's censors. That autumn he left Naples for Paris.
Premiered the month Bellini died, and written just before he lost his parents and his wife in quick succession, it became his signature work, a portrait of a woman destroyed by love.
- Before Lucia's entrance in Act 1, a harp plays a long prelude alone, opening onto a chill night by a fountain haunted by a ghost story.
- The Act 2 sextet “Chi mi frena in tal momento” (What restrains me at such a moment) is a passage in which six characters sing different emotions at once. Follow how it begins in the low male voices and the voices stack up one by one.
- In the Act 3 mad scene, Lucia's voice and the flute answer each other like echoes. This famous dueling improvised ornament (cadenza) is not in Donizetti's score; it is known to have been added by singers in the late 19th century.
- Some recent productions perform this scene on the glass harmonica Donizetti originally intended (an instrument sounded by rubbing wet glass bowls). Heard beside the flute version, it sounds far more dreamlike.
Premiered just three months after he lost his wife, Virginia, the work invites us to read the despair of a queen who sends the one she loves to his death alongside his own grief at this time.
- The overture weaves in the tune of the English anthem “God Save the King,” announcing the setting: the court of Elizabeth I.
- In the final scene, “Vivi, ingrato” (Live, ungrateful one), the queen casts off her dignity and pleads for her lover's life. Listen as the slow melody gradually comes undone.
- After the cannon shot announcing the execution, “Quel sangue versato” (That blood that was shed) is a breathless closing number (cabaletta) driving through the high register, counted among the most punishing passages a soprano can face.
- Beverly Sills's singing of all three Tudor queens, those of Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda along with the queen of this work, is often recalled among aficionados.
V. Paris and Vienna · 1838–1845 (age 41–48)
(Conquest) Paris took him in. In 1840 alone, La fille du régiment premiered at the Opéra-Comique, while Les martyrs (a reworking of Poliuto) and La favorite premiered at the Opéra. His income grew beyond anything he had known in his Naples years. (Berlioz) Not everyone welcomed him. Writing in the Journal des débats, Berlioz needled him for monopolizing the theaters, complaining that Donizetti treated Paris like a conquered country. Meanwhile Wagner, then unknown and living in poverty in Paris, scraped by on a commission from the publisher Schlesinger to make a piano arrangement of La favorite. (Vienna) When Linda di Chamounix triumphed in Vienna in 1842, the Austrian imperial court gave him the title of court Kapellmeister and composer, and from then on he directed a Viennese season every year. That same spring, at Rossini’s request, he conducted the Italian premiere of the Stabat Mater in Bologna. Rossini wanted to keep him in Bologna, but he declined. (Pasquale) Don Pasquale, given at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris in January 1843, is a comedy that mocks an old bachelor, yet the loneliness of old age shows through again and again. The same year in Vienna he led a production of Verdi’s Nabucco, introducing the young composer to the city. From around this time, headaches, fevers and nervous swings of mood grew more frequent, and Caterina Cornaro in 1844 became the last premiere of his lifetime.
A comedy written to a French libretto after he left Naples and settled in Paris, it shows how quickly he adapted to the tastes of an unfamiliar city.
- The tenor aria “Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête (Ah, my friends, what a festive day)” calls for high C nine times. In 1972 Pavarotti caused a sensation with this passage.
- When Juan Diego Flórez sang the same aria again as an encore at La Scala in 2007, it was recorded as the first such encore in decades at a house where encores had long been taboo.
- Marie’s “Chacun le sait (Everyone knows it)” rides on drumbeats and a jaunty rhythm like a military march, portraying the pluck of a girl raised by soldiers.
- Marie’s farewell to the regiment, “Il faut partir (I must go),” is a slow, plaintive song that contrasts with the high spirits before it. Don’t miss this moment of tears set in the middle of a comedy.
His last great comedy, premiered in Paris just as the first signs of his illness were appearing. Through the laughter, the sadness of old age shows.
- In the Act 3 garden-scene serenade “Com’è gentil (How lovely)”, the orchestra plucks its strings with the fingers (pizzicato) to imitate a guitar accompaniment, while an offstage chorus hums softly beneath.
- The moment Norina slaps Pasquale, the music suddenly darkens. This passage, in which the comic old man swallows his humiliation, is counted the loneliest moment in the whole work.
- The Act 3 duet “Cheti, cheti, immantinente (Quietly, quietly, at once)” is a breakneck passage in which two basses pour out words without pausing for breath; whether the text comes across clearly is the measure of a great performance.
- Norina’s Act 1 aria “Quel guardo il cavaliere (That glance the knight)” opens with her reading aloud from a book and scoffing, revealing at a stroke the character of a clever woman.
VI. Homecoming in darkness · 1845–1848 (age 48–51)
(Illness) In the summer of 1845, in Paris, paralysis struck one side of his body. Syphilis, long dormant, had invaded his brain and nerves, as the records of his doctors and the post-mortem findings confirm. His speech and behavior grew ever more clouded. (Ivry) In February 1846, his nephew Andrea, sent by his brother Giuseppe, and the doctors committed him to a sanatorium at Ivry, outside Paris. For a time he suffered from not knowing why he was there, while a long wrangle dragged on between the French and Austrian authorities over bringing him home. (Homecoming) In October 1847 he at last returned to Bergamo and stayed in the house of Baroness Scotti, who cared for him dearly. He could barely speak. He died on 8 April 1848, in a spring when Lombardy was seething with revolution against Austria. He was fifty. (Rest) In 1875 his remains were moved to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo and laid near the tomb of his teacher Mayr, who had died three years before him. A life that began in a basement flat ended beside his teacher. (Legacy) Liszt wrote a piano fantasy on Lucia and spread it across Europe, and Verdi set out from the dramatic melody Donizetti had laid down. His operas, of which only a handful had stayed on the stage for a time, were reawakened in the mid-20th century by singers such as Callas, Sutherland and Sills.
Lesser-known stories
(Brother) His eldest brother, Giuseppe Donizetti, went to Constantinople in 1828 at the invitation of the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II and reorganized the court military band along Western lines. The Mahmudiye March he wrote served as the empire’s official march, and he was even given the title of pasha. Overshadowed by his younger brother’s fame, he is seldom mentioned in Italy, but in Turkish music history he is regarded as the starting point of the introduction of Western music. The nephew Andrea who brought Donizetti home from Ivry was this brother’s son. (Glass) The mad scene in Lucia was originally written not for flute but for glass harmonica. Traces of this survive in the autograph score, but owing to circumstances between the theater and the player just before the premiere it was changed to flute, and for more than a century the flute version became the standard. Only as research into the original score advanced in the late 20th century did performances restoring the original instrument begin to appear. (Skull) At the post-mortem in 1848, one of the doctors present secretly removed the top of the skull. The fact came to light only in 1875, when the grave was opened to move the remains to the basilica; the fragment was recovered from the home of the doctor’s relatives and kept at the Bergamo civic library and the Donizetti museum before finally being buried with the rest of his remains in 1951. It was the product of medical curiosity about brain disease combined with the fashion for collecting the bones of famous people, and because the family and the city authorities were long reluctant to bring it to light, it survived only in local records.
Glossary notes 📚🔎
Bel canto
(Literally) Italian for “beautiful (bel) singing (canto).” (In music) The style of singing that flowered in the operas of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti in the first half of the 19th century. Its essence is to control the breath evenly so as to spin long melodies seamlessly, and to sing even rapid, brilliant ornaments as if without effort. Rather than pushing with a big voice, it strives to sustain a beautiful sound to the very end. Think of the friend in choir who, without shouting, sings so that every word carries clearly to the back of the classroom. A bel canto singer then adds dazzling virtuosity on top of that.
Libretto
(Literally) The Italian for book (libro) took a suffix meaning “small,” becoming “little book.” The name comes from the thin booklets of lyrics that audiences of old bought and read at the theater. (In music) The text of an opera — all the words the characters sing and speak. The composer receives this text and sets it to music. Donizetti worked in partnership with librettists such as Felice Romani and Salvadore Cammarano. It is like preparing a school play by first writing the script and then choosing the background music. In opera, though, nearly every line of the script becomes song.
Recitative
(Literally) From the Italian recitare (to recite), meaning a song sung as if reciting. (In music) The speechlike singing in an opera that moves the plot along quickly. The rhythm of the words comes before melody, and the accompaniment is often just a few simple chords. In the aria that follows, the character stops and sings out their feelings at length. If the dialogue scene that explains the situation before a game’s next level is the recitative, then the main stretch of play where you actually show your skill is the aria.
Cabaletta
(In music) In bel canto opera, the fast, brilliant closing song attached to the latter part of an aria. After the slow song before it has unfolded sorrow or longing at length, the situation shifts and the character bursts out with resolve or rage in a quick rhythm. The same tune is usually sung twice, and the second time the singer adds ornaments to show off their technique. “Coppia iniqua” at the end of Anna Bolena is a classic example. It resembles the stretch of a sports-day relay where the anchor pours out every last ounce of strength in the dash to the finish line.
Opera buffa
(Literally) The Italian buffa means comic. It shares a root with buffone, meaning clown. (In music) Italian comic opera in which ordinary people from everyday life stir up commotion. It is the counterpart of serious opera (opera seria), which features heroes of myth and history. Rapid-fire patter songs, crossed misunderstandings and a final reconciliation are its staple ingredients. Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and Don Pasquale are counted the last masterpieces of this tradition. Think of a play set to music about the uproar when classmates pass notes to the wrong people.
Grand opéra
(Literally) French for “grand (grand) opera.” (In music) The large-scale opera fashionable at the Paris Opéra in the 1830s–40s. Usually long, in five acts, it was set against historical events and always included massive choruses, lavish stage machinery and ballet scenes. In Paris, Donizetti took on this genre with La favorite and Dom Sébastien. It is less like a play put on in a classroom than a big production mounted by the whole school in the auditorium, complete with sets, lighting and dance.
Cadenza
(Literally) From the Latin cadere (to fall), it meant the close in which music settles down toward its end. The passage just before that close, where the performer showed off their skill, came to bear the name on its own. (In music) A brilliant ornamental passage that a solo singer or player spins out freely alone while the accompaniment pauses. Composers sometimes wrote them out, but in the bel canto era singers often made up their own. The famous cadenza in Lucia’s mad scene, where voice and flute trade phrases, was likewise added by later singers. It is the same spot as the last bar at karaoke where the backing track briefly drops out and you slip in an embellishment of your own. (Elsewhere) In English, cadence, from the same root, can also mean the number of times a cyclist turns the pedals in a minute.