Gaetano Donizetti, the composer of nearly seventy operas, was born in Bergamo, Northern Italy, on November 29, 1797, six years after the death of Mozart. The fifth of six children, he was baptized Domenico Gaetano Maria. The family was very poor and lived in a dark, cramped basement apartment in the old part of this historic medieval town. He later described his home as follows: "I was born underground in Borgo Canale. You went down cellar steps, where no glimmer of light ever penetrated". When his father became a janitor at a pawnshop, an apartment came with this position, and he was able to move his family to more comfortable quarters. The boy sang in the choir at Santa Maria Maggiore and soon came to the attention of the music director, Simon Mayr* (1763-1845), himself a composer of many operas. Mayr had taken over a centuries old school in Bergamo which trained the choir for the church. He converted it to a full music school so the boys could continue studies after their voices changed. Donizetti, at the age of nine, was one of the first students. The school exists today, now renamed the Istituto Musicale Gaetano Donizetti. Gaetano's older brother was also a musician and became the Chief of Music to the Ottoman armies in Turkey!

Although Donizetti's voice was not outstanding, at his entrance examinations for the school he had been found to have a good ear, and he was admitted on three months probation. Mayr, who introduced the choral music of Handel, Beethoven, Mozart and other German composers to Italy, was to become his student's mentor and friend. He did study singing, but one of his teachers complained that it was not been possible to correct his defective voice and proposed he be dismissed. Because he was a diligent student, outstanding at the piano, and had started to compose, Mayr allowed him to stay. However, all was not smooth. There were reports of his "not too regular conduct outside school", and he hated mathematics, geography and languages. In spite of this, and over the objections of his father who wanted him to contribute to the family income, he won scholarships and, at age eighteen, went to study in Bologna. While there he composed his very first opera, the one-act Il Pigmalione based on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. On his return to Bergamo, Mayr made him responsible for the music library at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore.

Bergamo was addicted to opera and had two theatres. However, on Donizetti's return to his native city, he composed not operas but sixteen string quartets. Soon he did turn to opera and, when he was twenty-one, his first full-length opus Enrico di Borgogne was performed in Venice. On opening night, the soprano fainted from stage fright at the end of Act I, much of her music had to be omitted in Act II, and she was replaced for the finale. In spite of this problematic beginning, Donizetti's talent was recognized, and he received a commission for a second opera. He continued to compose, writing a total of twenty-seven operas between 1818 and 1830. However, none was a lasting success until his Anna Bolena (based on Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England) which premièred on December 26, 1830. This was the first of his 'Three Queens' trilogy. The other two are Roberto Devereux about Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex, and Maria Stuarda (Mary Queen of Scots). A quick writer and frequent borrower from his own material, he was able to produce three or four operas per year. Many were tragedies such as the ever popular Lucia di Lammermoor (based on The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott), but he also wrote light comedies. The three of these regularly produced today are L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love — 1832), La Fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment — 1840) and Don Pasquale (1843). At time of his death, roughly one-fourth of all the operas then in production were by him! When he was once asked to name his favorite, he replied, "How can I say? A father always has a preference for a crippled child, and I have so many".

In 1821 Donizetti left Bergamo for Rome and seldom returned. His passport, necessary in the then still divided Italy, stated the purpose of his trip was to produce an opera at the Teatro Argentina. In Rome he met, and later married, Virginia Vasseli. The marriage displeased his father, and the composer never took his wife to see Bergamo or to meet his family. The young couple moved to Naples in 1822 (during the last week of Rossini's residence there), but they were not to have a happy life. Donizetti soon developed symptoms of a disease which we now know to have been syphilis. As a result, while Virginia became pregnant three times, the babies were either stillborn or died soon after birth. When Virginia herself died in 1837 the composer was devastated.

That same year, with his career at its height, he wrote to Mayr:

Most worthy master, how to thank you I do not know — there are so many great and eternal obligations I owe you — just to mention them alone is a hard task. ... I can only offer myself to you for life, to your commands, and I ask of you a million forgivenesses if from time to time I troubled you — Oh! My dear benefactor.

Throughout his life, Donizetti remained devoted to Mayr. He was very anxious that the completed score for Don Pasquale be sent to his old teacher as his final gift to the man who had not much longer to live.

Donizetti was always a rapid and prolific writer. While composing, he never went near the piano but worked at a desk as though writing a letter. Unless someone was playing or singing, he could work under very noisy conditions. Like other opera composers of the time, Donizetti was continually frustrated by censorship and eventually left Italy for Paris. There he worked on two operas for the Opéra, long an ambition of his. Many of his Italian works had already been presented in the Théâtre Italien so he was known, but he longed for the prestige of works presented at the Opéra. He also had commissions for several other works, so almost as an afterthought, he dashed off a "little work" La Fille du Régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment). He remained in either France or Austria for most of the rest of his life. It was in Austria, where he was briefly the court music director, that he probably saw Pavesi's Ser Marc'Antonio on which his Don Pasquale is based.

However, by 1843, the year of Don Pasquale première, the composer's physical and mental deterioration, due to his syphilis, was apparent to all. At first it was attributed to overwork, but soon he was no longer able to write coherently and became extremely paranoid. In early 1846 he was taken to a sanitarium outside of Paris, and held there against his will. He was later brought back to the city and, finally, for his last days, to Bergamo.

By this time he was completely unable to communicate with, or react to, his friends. Even his own music did not rouse him from his stupor. When he died at age fifty he was, like several of his heroines, completely mad. An autopsy confirmed his syphilis; sadly, he died of a disease which can easily be cured today. He was buried with his mentor, Simon Mayr, whom he always called his second father, in Bergamo's Santa Maria Maggiore, the church he had attended as a boy.

*Born in Germany as Johann Simon Mayr, he was known in Italy as Giovanni Simone Mayr.

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Revised April 2009
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