OPERA DONIZETTI The Italian Opera Company of Chicago

In 1981, a rabbi named Harold Kushner wrote and published a book titled, When Bad things Happen to Good People. He could have been writing about Gaetano Donizetti, a very good man who seemed to be on the way to achieving one of the most spectacular careers imaginable. Donizetti was a genuine genius, the composer of some 70 operas, a few of which are among the most excellent of their kind, but his career was cut short, and his final years were devastatingly tragic.

Gaetano Donizetti was born in the picturesque northern Italian town of Bergamo. The son of the caretaker of a pawn shop, Donizetti appears to have been in the first family generation that displayed musical talent. His older brother, Giuseppe (1788-1856), was a bandsman in one of Napoleon's Italian brigades and went on to become the supreme director of military music for the Ottoman Empire. Gaetano, however, was blessed with the attention, and what turned out to be the life-long friendship, of pedagogue-composer Johann Simon (permanently Italianized to "Giovanni Simone") Mayr (1763-1845). Serving as maestro di capella for Santa Maria Maggiore, Mayr reopened the Lezioni Caritatevoli Musica (charitable music school) in 1806. The nine-year-old Gaetano was accepted as one of the

institution's first students while Giuseppe was rejected because he was too old. A native Bavarian, Mayr had lived in Vienna and knew first hand the music of Haydn and Mozart before he moved to northern Italy and became a fairly successful composer of Italian opera. Given Mayr's background, it is doubtful that the young Donizetti could have done better with a teacher of the fundamentals of music anywhere else in Italy.

In 1815 Donizetti went to Bologna to study with Padre Stanislao Mattei, in the footsteps of Rossini (who by this time had already composed twelve operas). Here the talented youth attained a solid foundation in counterpoint and fugue, and begin composing in earnest, mainly for instruments. But being a normal and handsome young man, he also probably enjoyed the various attractions of Bologna, which was known for its hedonistic delights, and that included cavorting with loose women. It is believed that it is at this time that Donizetti unknowingly became infected with the syphilis that would cause him so much grief and ultimately destroy him some 30 years later.

Giovanni Simone Mayr

Padre Stanislao Mattei

It was while Donizetti studied with Mattei, in 1816, that Donizetti composed his first opera, the one-act Il Pigmilione to a libretto whose author is uncertain. This piece was not performed in the composer's lifetime but his next two, Enrico di Borgogna (with the first of several librettos for Donizetti operas by Bartolomeo Merelli [1794-1879], who was to play such a pivotal role in Verdi's career), and Il falegname di Livonia, were both staged at the Teatro San Luca in Venice in the winter season of 1818-19. Several years later Donizetti became recognized as a composer to be reckoned with after the Roman success of his Zoraida di Granata (1822).

Today one might wonder why so many of Donizetti's 70 operas are virtually forgotten. He was certainly a

very accomplished composer with a profound gift for melody, but he was also a product of his times, and to make a living he needed to churn out as many new operas as he could regardless of musical or dramatic quality. Most opera spectators of this time went to the theater to see and hear the prima donna show her stuff, especially with flashy coloratura-laden cabalettas, and Donizetti's operas at least accommodated his audiences in this way. He would have gotten quite a bit more money for a hit that played in numerous theaters in Italy and abroad, but this required, even for a genius like Donizetti, extra time and attention in the composition process. But one never knows whether an opera will be a triumph or a failure and this was a risk that he was not prepared to take. He preferred to earn smaller but certain fees every time he composed. So the more operas he wrote, the more money he made.

But a talent like Donizetti's could not be hidden for long. Even with his "ordinary" operas his works were being performed by great singers like Rubini, Lablache and Tamburini. He also signed up with super-impresario Domenico Barbaja after another Roman success with the buffa opera, L'ajo nell'imbarazzo (1824). For the next six years, Donizetti	Giovanni-Battista Rubini	Antonio Tamburini	Luigi Lablache	Domenico Barbaja
composed one opera after another, mostly for Barbaja's theaters in Naples. In 1828, in the midst of his most productive years, Donizetti married Virginia Vasselli, sister of Roman physician Antonio Vasselli, a long time close friend of the composer. Shortly after the

Virginia Vasselli Donizetti	Giuditta Pasta	marriage in Rome and the couple's arrival in Naples, Barbaja offered Donizetti the position of Director of the Royal Theaters of Naples beginning in 1829, a job that the composer accepted and held until 1838. Like Rossini, who had occupied this position before, Donizetti was free to compose for other theaters. Thus the composer scored his most acclaimed, and first international, success, Anna Bolena (1830) with Giuditta Pasta in the title role at the Teatro Carcano in Milan. With this opera, his 30th, Donizetti was now recognized, along with Rossini and Bellini, as one of the three top composers of Italian opera. Donizetti composed five more operas in his usual rapid pace before he scored his next great success, in Milan again, but this time at the Teatro della Canobbiana, L'elisir d'amore (1832). This comic romance was immensely popular and has
remained in the standard repertoire ever since its premiere. The most famous aria from this opera, "Una furtiva lagrima," is a staple of today's tenor showcase recordings and is evidence that male roles were beginning to grow in popularity at this time. Singing women, of course, continued to be the main attraction of Italian opera. The following story taken from Charles Osborne's delightful and informative The Bel Canto Operas, illustrates both the importance of the prima donna and the seriousness with which singers approached their roles in the Bel Canto era. Donizetti's Maria Stuarda (1834) is scored for two prima donnas to portray Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I of England. These roles were to be sung at the San Carlo by Giuseppina Ronzi di Begnis and Anna del Serre respectively. The original libretto has a line for Maria directed at Elizabeth, "vil bastarda!" During the dress rehearsal, di Begnis delivered the line so vehemently that del Serre attacked the other woman touching off a violent physical battle between the two sopranos. Later, Donizetti wrote to his Roman librettist Feretti that when di Begnis thought that the composer was out of earshot she said, "Donizetti is always protecting that whore of a del Serre!" According to Donizetti, he turned on the soprano and shouted, "Those two queens were whores, and you two are whores!"

As Donizetti's fame grew, besides working with Italy's best singers, like the legendary Maria Malibran (1808-1836), he also composed to the verses of the most popular librettists available, such as Felice Romani. In 1835 Donizetti teamed up for the first time with perhaps the best librettist of all, Salvatore Cammarano (1801-1852) for the San Carlo premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor, a huge success and arguably the quintessential Romantic opera.

Earlier in the year, in response to an invitation by

Maria Malibran

Felice Romani

Salvatore Cammarano

Rossini, Donizetti had composed Marino Faliero for the Th��tre des Italiens in Paris, with the same group of singers that became known as the "Puritani Quartet" after the Bellini opera that had its Paris premiere in January. Paris was the promised land for Italian composers because of the fame and riches associated with a commission for one of the theaters there, but for Donizetti, his first
attempt in the French capital was a disappointment, partly because of Bellini's popularity. After the death of the younger composer,
however, the way was clear for a series of French successes. For the Paris Op�ra Donizetti composed Les Martyrs (1840), La
Favorite (1840) and Dom S�bastien (1843); for the Op�ra-Comique he composed La Fille du r�giment (1840); and Don Pasquale
(1843) for the Th��tre des Italiens, once again with Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini and Lablache.

Donizeeti's career hit its zenith when his old friend and librettist Merelli, who was now impresario of La Scala in Milan and the K�rntnerthor in Vienna, commissioned him to stage a new opera for the Austrian capital, which was to be Linda di Chamounix (1842). This opera was so successful that Donizetti was appointed Imperial Court Composer (the same position held by Mozart) just days after the premiere. After Don Pasquale, he returned to Vienna with another new opera, Maria di Rohan (1843), also a triumph. While in Vienna for this premiere, he also directed the first Viennese production of Verdi's Nabucco. (Donizetti had attended the historic premiere of this work in 1842.) At this point, Donzetti was the undisputed King of Italian Opera. But during this time, the insidious disease that Donizetti had contracted in his youth now began to wreak havoc with the composer's physical and mental health. It is very possible that the syphilis that was now raging in Donizetti's nervous system had been the
Giuseppe Donizetti	Andrea Donizetti with Composer	cause of the deaths of his beloved wife, Virginia, and his children in the late 1830s. Mercifully, he never had to consciously confront this horrible possibility. As his condition worsened, the composer's brother Giuseppe dispatched his son Andrea to Paris from Constantinople. Based on the recommendation of three doctors, Andrea agreed to institutionalize his uncle in an asylum in Ivry, three miles from Paris. In 1847, 16 months after Donizetti was committed to the asylum, he was allowed to be taken to Paris but, for a reason that is still unclear, he was held under virtual house arrest by the police for several more months. Finally, after the intervention by the Austrian ambassador to France, Donizetti's family had the

now vegetative composer taken back to his native Bergamo, where he died on April 8, 1848.

Like his younger rival, Bellini, Donizetti stood out from a host of composers like a man among boys. Today, even his not-so-famous operas can be staged with the assurance that they will be at least musically pleasing (if you have the singers who can do justice to the music). As a composer, Donizetti may not be ranked as high by most critics as Verdi or Puccini, but there is no music ever written by anyone more beautiful than the sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor, "Chi mi frena in tal momento."