Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

Maria Stuarda

Gaetano Donizetti

Gaetano Donizetti was born in Bergamo, Italy, the fifth of six children, all living in extreme poverty. Donizetti’s family had no tradition of music but the opera composer Mayr, maestro di cappella at S. Maria Maggiore in Bergamo since 1802, persuaded a local charitable institution to open a free music school, primarily to train choirboys but also to impart a well-grounded musical education. In 1806 the school opened, and Donizetti was in the first group to enroll (the school is still running and is now named after Donizetti). Mayr was a very talented educator and he immediately took the extremely talented, warm, humorous and cheerful Gaetano under his protective wing. Donizetti was encouraged then to transfer to Bologna for further counterpoint and orchestration studies. Already in his early days Donizetti was an amazingly fast composer, often writing whole compositions in one day, and extremely productive (he died at 51 having composed 73 operas and many non-operatic works). Rossini was also a very fast composer (he composed Il Barbiere di Siviglia in 13 days) and an anecdote tells of Donizetti commenting about how lazy Rossini was!

The first opera of Donizetti to be performed to national success (after some more youthful works for Venice) was Zoraida di Granata written in 1822 for Rome’s Teatro Argentina. The Neapolitan impresario Barbaja, who had also been Rossini’s impresario, heard of the young lad and offered him a contract. Donizetti arrived in Naples just before Rossini was to depart, and while Bellini (born in 1801) was a pupil at the conservatory. In Naples Donizetti composed many operas, but none of them was a great success, except maybe La zingara (The Gypsy) of 1822. In this early period, usually defined “Rossinian,” he composed many works, and not only for Naples. His personality already shines through, however, both in the variety of tone and subject as in the dramatic vitality of his characters. Between La zingara and Anna Bolena (1830) he composed 23 operas, in which his Romantic temperament seeks to adapt to the requests of the censors, who in Naples insisted, for example, on happy endings. In 1828 Donizetti married Virginia Vasselli (1808-37) who died of cholera. Their three children died in infancy.

The year of Anna Bolena (1830) marks a turning point in Donizetti’s career, who two years later, as his career took off in all of Europe, broke his contract with Barbaja. In 1832 came first a fiasco with Ugo, conte di Parigi (for La Scala in Milan) followed by the wild success of L’elisir d’amore to a libretto adapted by Romani from Scribe’s Le philtre. Another great success followed the next year with Lucrezia Borgia, based on Hugo’s play, premiered in 1833 in the Teatro alla Scala of Milan. Barbaja had not liked Donizetti’s departure and in 1834 he convinced him to sign a new contract that required one serious opera a year for his Teatro San Carlo. The first opera Donizetti delivered to Barbaja was Maria Stuarda (based on Schiller’s play), which was opposed by censors for its tragic ending. In typical Donizetti fashion the music was completely rearranged (in just two weeks) to a completely new libretto: Buondelmonte. In its new garb the opera had little success. The original Maria Stuarda was premiered the next year at La Scala but it met with no success because of soprano Malibran’s ill health and caprices.

In 1835 Rossini invited Donizetti to Paris, to stage Marino Faliero at the Théâtre-Italien. However Parisian audiences had recently been exposed to Bellini’s I puritani, which had an extraordinary success, and this made Donizetti’s opera almost disappear. In Paris Donizetti was exposed to ‘grand’ opera of Meyerbeer and Halévy and upon his return to Naples in 1835 he immediately composed his second serious opera—Lucia di Lammermoor, which was represented with great success at the San Carlo. Its score became the foundation-stone of Italian Romanticism. Donizetti’s music had now a primitive dramatic power. The score of Lucia is worked out with critical care and there are fewer trivial melodic episodes than in his other operas. Donizetti always had a Midas gift of turning everything into the kind of melody that people would sing and remember.

In 1836 he composed an interesting opera, L’assedio di Calais, for the San Carlo, “in the French style” i.e., with a ballet, fewer cabalettas and many important ensemble scenes. For the last time here Donizetti follows the almost extinct tradition of writing a heroic male role for a female contralto. His next three operas (two for Venice—Pia de’ Tolomei and Maria di Rudenz—and one for Naples: Roberto Devereux) were neither fiascos nor successes. In 1837 the Music Conservatory of Naples offered him the position of director but the royal approval was delayed and then allowed to lapse because a strong party preferred Mercadante, more closely identified with Naples.
Shortly after the conservatory failed business, his wife and one of his children died, and at the same time the Neapolitan censors banned his opera Poliuto because of the on-stage martyrdom of a saint. Donizetti then packed his suitcases and career and headed for Paris, where Rossini had invited him and where he arrived in October of 1838. His operas were immediately performed in four Parisian theatres, much to the consternation of local composers, especially Berlioz, who attacked him. In Paris he reworked some operas for the Théâtre-Italien and composed new operas (in 1840 La fille du régiment and Les martyrs, which was Poliuto expanded and revised to a French libretto by Scribe). In 1840 La favorita opened first slowly and gradually established itself firmly.

Upon arriving in Paris Donizetti had hoped to follow Rossini’s example and retire, but he became ill and clung to his career. By 1844 he had lost the ability to concentrate sufficiently to compose works of more than a limited compass. In 1842 Donizetti went to Vienna to have Linda di Chamounix performed and hoping, as did indeed happen, to be offered the position of Kapellmeister to the Austrian court. The year 1843 saw the composition of his comic masterpiece Don Pasquale, which became one of glories of Paris’s Théâtre-Italien overnight. Maria di Rohan, which opened in Vienna in 1844 was his last powerful Romantic composition.

Around 1843-44 Donizetti started behaving erratically and embarrassingly. Ugly gossip circulated about his uncontrollable excesses. Through 1845 he was in Paris, deteriorating visibly because of his condition, diagnosed as cerebro-spinal degeneration of syphilitic origin. He was placed in a sanatorium, where he stayed 17 months. After that he was brought back, paralyzed, to Bergamo where he died in 1848.

Alexandra Amati-Camperi

Box Office Gift Shop Home