Gaetano Donizetti was born with a throat defect that nearly ended his musical career before it began. In 1807, at the age of nine, the young boy from Bergamo was accepted into Simon Mayr's Lezioni Caritatevoli school, but his voice was described as having a difetto di gola, a flaw that made him a poor choirboy during the first three months of trial. The school administrators were ready to dismiss him, yet Mayr, a German composer of international renown who had become maestro di cappella at Bergamo's principal church in 1802, saw something extraordinary in the child. Mayr reported to the authorities that Gaetano surpassed all others in musical progress, a claim that convinced the school to keep him despite the physical limitation. This early struggle defined the rest of his life, as he would spend decades proving that his inner musicality could overcome the physical constraints of his instrument. The boy who would become one of the greatest opera composers of the nineteenth century was once told he might never sing again, yet he learned to compose with a precision and emotional depth that would change the course of Italian music.
The Prolific Machine
Donizetti was a composer who worked with a terrifying speed, often composing entire operas in a matter of weeks to meet the demands of impresarios and audiences. Between 1818 and 1848, he wrote over 70 operas, a number that seems almost impossible to comprehend in the context of the time. His first one-act opera, Il Pigmalione, was written when he was only 19, and it may never have been performed during his lifetime, yet it marked the beginning of a career that would see him produce works at a rate that baffled his contemporaries. In 1830, when Anna Bolena was first performed, he made a major impact on the Italian and international opera scene, shifting the balance of success away from primarily comedic operas. Yet even after that date, his best-known works included comedies such as L'elisir d'amore in 1832 and Don Pasquale in 1843. The sheer volume of his output was not just a matter of productivity; it was a survival mechanism. Donizetti needed the money for his various commitments to his family, which included a younger brother and his parents, and he often wrote multiple operas in a single year to keep his commissions flowing. This relentless pace would eventually take a toll on his health, but it also ensured that his music reached audiences across Europe, from Naples to Paris, from Vienna to London.
The Queen Of The Opera
The year 1830 marked a turning point in Donizetti's career when Anna Bolena was first performed at the Teatro Carcano in Milan on the 26th of December. The opera featured Giuditta Pasta in the title role and the acclaimed tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini as Percy, and it achieved instant fame throughout Europe. Performances were staged up and down the Italian peninsula between 1830 and 1834, and then throughout Europe's capitals well into the 1840s, with revivals being presented up to about 1881. Confirmed in London was the first European capital to see the work, given at the King's Theatre on the 8th of July 1831. This success solidified Donizetti's reputation as a composer of successful serious opera, although other comedies were to appear quite quickly. The opera was based on the historical figure of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, and it tapped into the continental fascination with the Tudor period of 16th century English history. Many of these historical characters appear in Donizetti's dramas, which both preceded and followed Anna Bolena, including Elisabetta al castello di Kenilworth and Maria Stuarda. The success of Anna Bolena also coincided with the death of Vincenzo Bellini and the retirement of Gioachino Rossini, leaving Donizetti as the sole reigning genius of Italian opera. This period of dominance was short-lived, as his health began to decline, but it established him as a master of the bel canto style, a genre that would define his legacy.
In 1838, Donizetti moved to Paris, vowing never to have dealings with the San Carlo again after the King of Naples banned the production of Poliuto on the grounds that such a sacred subject was inappropriate for the stage. In Paris, he offered Poliuto to the Opéra, and it was set to a new and expanded four-act French-language libretto by Eugène Scribe with the title, Les Martyrs. Performed in April 1840, it was his first grand opera in the French tradition and was quite successful. Before leaving that city in June 1840, he had time to oversee the translation of Lucia di Lammermoor into Lucie de Lammermoor as well as to write La fille du régiment, his first opera written specifically to a French libretto. This became another success. The move to Paris was driven by a desire for greater freedom to choose subject matter, in addition to receiving larger fees and greater prestige. From 1838, beginning with an offer from the Paris Opéra for two new works, he spent much of the following 10 years in that city, and set several operas to French texts as well as overseeing staging of his Italian works. Throughout the 1840s Donizetti moved between Naples, Rome, Paris, and Vienna, continuing to compose and stage his own operas as well as those of other composers. The Parisian experience was a double-edged sword; it gave him the freedom to explore new genres, but it also exposed him to the pressures of the French opera world, which demanded a level of grandeur and scale that was different from the Italian tradition.
The Mad Composer
By 1843, Donizetti was exhibiting symptoms of syphilis and probable bipolar disorder, and his inner man was broken, sad, and incurably sick. The preoccupation with work which obsessed Donizetti in the last months of 1842 and throughout 1843 suggests that he recognised what was wrong with him and that he wanted to compose as much as he could while he was still able. In early 1846, he was obliged to be confined to an institution for the mentally ill, and by late 1847, friends had him moved back to Bergamo, where he died in April 1848 in a state of mental derangement due to neurosyphilis. The culmination of the crisis in Donizetti's health came in August 1845 when he was diagnosed with cerebro-spinal syphilis and severe mental illness. Two doctors, including Dr. Philippe Ricord, a specialist in syphilis, recommended that, along with various remedies, he abandon work altogether and both agreed that the Italian climate would be better for his health. But letters to friends reveal two things: that he continued to work on Gemma di Vergy that autumn for its performance in Paris on the 16th of December, and that he revealed a lot about the progression of his illness. The composer's brother Giuseppe dispatched his son Andrea to Paris from Constantinople, and they consulted multiple doctors who concluded that Donizetti no longer was capable of calculating sanely the significance of his decisions. The final journey to Bergamo was a seventeen-day trip that ended with his death on the afternoon of the 8th of April 1848, after a serious bout of apoplexy occurred on the 1st of April followed by further decline and the inability to take in food.
The Legacy Of A Forgotten Genius
After the death of Bellini, Donizetti was the most significant composer of Italian opera until Verdi, and his reputation fluctuated, but since the 1940s and 1950s his work has been increasingly performed. His best known operas today are Lucia di Lammermoor, La fille du régiment, L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale. Giuseppe Mazzini praised Donizetti's operas for embodying the spirit of the Risorgimento, viewing them as expressions of Italian identity and cultural pride. Donizetti, a prolific composer, is best known for his operatic works, but he also wrote music in a number of other forms, including some church music, a number of string quartets, and some orchestral pieces. Altogether, he composed about 75 operas, 16 symphonies, 19 string quartets, 193 songs, 45 duets, 3 oratorios, 28 cantatas, instrumental concertos, sonatas, and other chamber pieces. The composer's legacy is one of immense productivity and emotional depth, a body of work that has survived the ravages of time and the changing tastes of audiences. His operas continue to be performed around the world, and his influence on other composers, such as Giuseppe Verdi, is undeniable. The story of Gaetano Donizetti is a testament to the power of music to transcend the limitations of the human condition, and to the enduring appeal of the bel canto style that he helped to define.