Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was born on November 29, 1797, and died on April 8, 1848. He was an Italian composer who is best known for creating more than 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, Donizetti was one of the most important composers of the bel canto opera style during the early 1800s. He may have influenced other composers, such as Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in Bergamo, a city in Lombardy. At a young age, Simon Mayr took him under his wing and provided him with a full scholarship to attend a school Mayr had established. There, Donizetti received thorough musical training. Mayr helped Donizetti gain admission to the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy Il Pigmalione, which may never have been performed during his lifetime.
In 1822, after completing his ninth opera, Domenico Barbaja, the manager of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, offered Donizetti a position. This led to Donizetti moving to Naples, where he lived until the production of Caterina Cornaro in January 1844. A total of 51 of Donizetti’s operas were performed in Naples. Before 1830, his comic operas were more successful than his serious ones. His first major success came with Zoraida di Granata, an opera seria performed in Rome in 1822. In 1830, the premiere of Anna Bolena marked a turning point in Donizetti’s career, as it shifted the focus of his success from comedic operas to more serious works. However, some of his most famous works remained comedies, such as L’elisir d’amore (1832) and Don Pasquale (1843). Serious historical dramas, like Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) and Roberto Devereux (1837), also achieved great success. All of Donizetti’s operas up to this point were written in Italian.
Donizetti became frustrated by the strict censorship rules in Italy, especially in Naples. Around 1836, he became interested in working in Paris, where he had more freedom to choose subjects for his operas and could earn higher fees and greater recognition. From 1838, after receiving an offer from the Paris Opéra to create two new works, Donizetti spent much of the next 10 years in Paris. There, he composed operas in French and oversaw the staging of his Italian works. The first opera he created in Paris was a French version of Poliuto, which was revised and renamed Les martyrs in April 1840. Two other new operas were also performed in Paris at that time. During the 1840s, Donizetti traveled between Naples, Rome, Paris, and Vienna, continuing to compose and stage operas, both his own and those of other composers. Around 1843, he began suffering from a severe illness that limited his activities. By early 1846, he was forced to stay in an institution for people with mental illnesses. In late 1847, friends moved him back to Bergamo, where he died in April 1848 due to mental illness caused by neurosyphilis.
Early life and musical education in Bergamo and Bologna
Gaetano Donizetti was the youngest of three brothers. He was born in 1797 in the Borgo Canale area of Bergamo, which is just outside the city walls. His family was very poor and had no musical background. His father, Andrea, worked as a caretaker at the town pawnshop. In 1802, Simone Mayr, a German composer known for writing successful operas, became the music director at Bergamo's main church. In 1805, Mayr started the Lezioni Caritatevoli school in Bergamo (now called the Conservatorio Gaetano Donizetti) to teach music and other subjects to choirboys, beyond what they usually learned before their voices changed.
In 1807, Andrea Donizetti tried to enroll both his sons in the school. The older son, Giuseppe (then 18), was too old to join. However, Gaetano (then 9) was accepted. At first, Gaetano did not do well as a choirboy, and there were concerns about a throat problem. However, Mayr soon noticed that Gaetano was making great progress in music and convinced the school leaders to keep him. Gaetano stayed at the school for nine years, until 1815.
In 1809, as noted by Donizetti scholar William Ashbrook, Gaetano was told he might have to leave because his voice was changing. In 1810, he applied to the local art school, the Academia Carrara, but it is unclear if he attended classes. In 1811, Mayr helped Gaetano again. Mayr wrote both the story and music for a play called Il piccolo compositore di musica, which was performed as the school's final concert. In this play, Mayr included Gaetano as "the little composer," showing that Gaetano had musical talent. This performance helped Mayr argue that Gaetano should continue his music studies.
During the performance, Gaetano played a waltz and was credited in the play's story. All five young performers had chances to show their musical skills.
The next two years were difficult for Gaetano. At 16, he often missed classes and caused attention in the town. Despite this, Mayr convinced Gaetano's parents to let him keep studying and arranged two years of scholarships from the Congregazione di Carità in Bergamo. Mayr also gave Gaetano letters of recommendation to the publisher Giovanni Ricordi and to the Marchese Francesco Sampieri in Bologna, who helped find him a place to live. In Bologna, Gaetano studied musical structure at the Liceo Musicale under Padre Stanislao Mattei.
In Bologna, Gaetano proved that Mayr had confidence in him. Author John Stewart Allitt described Gaetano's early operatic works, such as Il pigmalione in 1816 and parts of Olympiade and L'ira d'Achille in 1817, as showing the skills of a student. Encouraged by Mayr, Gaetano returned to Bergamo in 1817. There, he wrote piano pieces and likely performed in quartets, where he also heard music by other composers. He also began looking for work.
Career as an opera composer
Donizetti stayed in Bologna as long as he could, but he had to return to Bergamo because there were no other opportunities. He had several small chances to work and met singers during the 1817/18 Carnival season, including soprano Giuseppina Ronzi de Begnis and her husband, bass Giuseppe de Begnis. A chance meeting with an old school friend, Bartolomeo Merelli, in April 1818 led to a commission to write the opera Enrico di Borgogna. Without a contract from an opera house, Donizetti wrote the music first and then found a company to accept it. Paolo Zancla, the manager of the Teatro San Luca in Venice, agreed to stage the opera. Enrico di Borgogna premiered on 14 November 1818 but had little success. The audience seemed more interested in the newly decorated opera house than the performance, which suffered from the last-minute cancellation of soprano Adelaide Catalani due to stage fright and the omission of her music. A review in Nuovo osservatore veneziano noted these issues but praised Donizetti’s musical style, saying the public wanted to applaud him after the opera.
This success led to another commission, and Donizetti wrote Una follia, a one-act opera, a month later. With no other work available, he returned to Bergamo, where a cast from the Venice production performed Enrico di Borgogna in his hometown on 26 December. In early 1819, he worked on sacred and instrumental music but had little else until late 1819, when he wrote Il falegname di Livonia from a libretto by Gherardo Bevilacqua-Aldobrandini. The opera premiered in Venice in December. He also expanded Le nozze in villa, a project he started in mid-1819, but the opera was not performed until the 1820/21 Carnival season in Mantua. Little is known about it except that it was not successful, and the score is lost.
After these works, Donizetti returned to Bergamo to think about how to advance his career. Music scholar William Ashbrook explains that, to please audiences in the early 19th century, composers needed to create a strong impression at their first performance and follow the musical style of Rossini, whose music was the public’s standard for judging new scores.
Donizetti stayed in Bergamo until October 1821, working on instrumental and choral pieces. During this time, he negotiated with Giovanni Paterni, the manager of Rome’s Teatro Argentina, and received a contract to write another opera from a libretto by Merelli. It is unclear how this connection formed, but Ashbrook suggests it may have been through Merelli or Mayr, who recommended Donizetti. This new opera, Zoraida di Granata, became Donizetti’s ninth work. The libretto was started in August, and by October, Donizetti had a letter of introduction from Mayr to Jacopo Ferretti, a Roman poet and librettist who later worked with Donizetti.
Donizetti arrived in Rome on 21 October, but staging Zoraida di Granata faced challenges. The tenor cast in the main role died days before the opening night on 28 January 1822, and the role had to be rewritten for a mezzo-soprano, a common practice at the time. The premiere was a success, as reported in Notizie del giorno.
Soon after 19 February, Donizetti left Rome for Naples, where he would live for much of his life. He had asked Mayr for a letter of introduction, but his fame had already spread. A newspaper announcement in Giornale del Regno delle Due Sicilie listed his opera as part of the summer season at the Teatro Nuovo. This news impressed Domenico Barbaja, the manager of Naples’ Teatro San Carlo and other theaters. By late March, Donizetti was offered a contract to compose new operas and prepare performances of other composers’ works. His first new opera, La zingara, premiered at the Teatro Nuovo on 12 May and was praised highly, running for 28 consecutive evenings and 20 more in July. One of the performances allowed Donizetti to meet 21-year-old Vincenzo Bellini, an event later described by Francesco Florimo.
His second new work, the one-act opera La lettera anonima, premiered on 29 June. Ashbrook notes that reviews highlighted Donizetti’s focus on the dramatic elements of opera rather than just musical formulas, a sign of his growing style.
For Chiara e Serafina, ossia I pirati, Donizetti signed a contract with librettist Felice Romani in August, but delays and cast illnesses led to poor reviews, though the opera was performed 12 times.
Returning to Rome, Donizetti revised Zoraida di Granata for the Teatro Argentina, as he disliked the original libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, calling it “a great barking.” He also agreed to write a new opera for Rome’s Teatro Valle with a libretto by Ferretti. He returned to Naples by late March.
In the spring of 1823, Doniz
Personal life
During his time in Rome for the production of Zoraida, Donizetti met the Vasselli family. Antonio Vasselli became a close friend, and his sister Virginia was 13 years old at that time. In 1828, Virginia married Donizetti. They had three children, but none of them lived to adulthood. After the deaths of her parents on July 30, 1837, Virginia died within a year. The cause of her death is believed to have been cholera or measles, though Ashbrook suggests it may have been linked to a serious syphilis infection.
At nine years old, Donizetti was the younger brother of Giuseppe Donizetti, who became the Chief Music Instructor for the Ottoman Empire at the court of Sultan Mahmud II (1808–1839) in 1828. The youngest of the three brothers was Francesco, who lived his entire life in Bergamo, except for a short visit to Paris during his brother’s illness. Francesco outlived Donizetti by only eight months.
Critical reception
After Bellini died, Donizetti became the most important composer of Italian opera until Verdi. His reputation changed over time, but since the 1940s and 1950s, his works have been performed more often. His most famous operas today include Lucia di Lammermoor, La fille du régiment, L'elisir d'amore, and Don Pasquale. Giuseppe Mazzini praised Donizetti's operas for showing the spirit of the Risorgimento, seeing them as examples of Italian identity and cultural pride.
Donizetti's compositions
Donizetti was a very productive composer. He is best known for his operas, but he also wrote music in other forms, such as church music, string quartets, and orchestral pieces. In total, 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.