Gaetano Donizetti

Gaetano Donizetti, born on 29 November 1797 in Bergamo and died on 8 April 1848 in the same city, was an Italian composer. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was one of the three great opera composers of the Italian bel canto era and marked the birth of Italian Romantic music.

A prolific composer, his repertoire includes a large number of genres, including sacred music, string quartet pieces, and orchestral works, but he is most famous for his operas, particularly Anna Bolena (1830), L'elisir d'amore (1832), Lucrezia Borgia (1833), Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), Maria Stuarda (1835), Roberto Devereux (1837), La Fille du régiment (1840), La Favorite (1840), and Don Pasquale (1843).

The fifth child of a poor family, he was initially a pupil of Simon Mayr, then went to Bologna to study with Father Stanislao Mattei. He composed his first opera, Il Pigmalione, in 1816, but Enrico di Borgogna, composed in 1818, was the first to be premiered. After alternating successes and failures, in 1827 he signed a contract with Domenico Barbaja, the impresario of the Neapolitan theatres, and settled in that city. There he met Vincenzo Bellini, with whom he became a rival on stage after the success of Anna Bolena. After Rossini's retirement (1829) and Bellini's premature death (1835), Donizetti became the undisputed master of Italian opera, a fact confirmed by the triumph of Lucia di Lammermoor. After failing to obtain the position of director of the Naples Conservatory and following the banning of his opera Poliuto by censorship in 1838, he became disillusioned with Neapolitan life and left for Paris, where he notably composed the opéra-comique La Fille du régiment, the grand opera La Favorite, and the opera buffa Don Pasquale. He made several journeys, notably to Vienna, where, in 1842, he conducted Linda di Chamounix with such success that the emperor appointed him court conductor. In 1845, the syphilis from which he had suffered for many years reached its final stage. In 1846, he was interned in a sanatorium near Paris, from where his relatives could only bring him back to Bergamo after lengthy procedures. He died in his hometown on 8 April 1848.

Donizetti's major importance in the history of music lies in the fact that he was the last to breathe new life into the lyrical style of the Neapolitan school, which was already in decline, by giving it a romantic aspect. Among his many operas, those composed from 1830 onwards are the most frequently performed in the repertoire. L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale remain popular pieces on lyrical stages, as do several of his dramatic operas. In the latter, he liked to include mad scenes where he offered performers many opportunities to shine with their vocal talent. He repeatedly strove to blur the line between opera seria and opera buffa: he often gave a romantic aspect to seemingly comical situations, thus developing the genre of opera semiseria. This marked a significant break with Rossini's art and foreshadowed the work of Giuseppe Verdi. After a period of oblivion from the late 19th century, his work was rediscovered from the late 1950s.