Gaetano Donizetti

Mayr was instrumental in obtaining a place for Donizetti at the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19,[6] he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy Il Pigmalione, which may never have been performed during his lifetime.

Significant historical dramas did succeed; they included Lucia di Lammermoor (the first to have a libretto written by Salvadore Cammarano) given in Naples in 1835, and one of the most successful Neapolitan operas, Roberto Devereux in 1837.

He founded the Lezioni Caritatevoli school in Bergamo (now the Conservatorio Gaetano Donizetti) in 1805 for the purpose of providing musical training, including classes in literature, beyond what choirboys ordinarily received up until the time that their voices broke.

[13] While not especially successful as a choirboy during the first three trial months of 1807 (there being some concern about a difetto di gola, a throat defect), Mayr was soon reporting that Gaetano "surpasses all the others in musical progress"[14] and he was able to persuade the authorities that the young boy's talents were worthy of keeping him in the school.

In addition, he provided the young musician with letters of recommendation to both the publisher Giovanni Ricordi as well as to the Marchese Francesco Sampieri in Bologna (who would find him suitable lodging) and where, at the Liceo Musicale, he was given the opportunity to study musical structure under the Padre Stanislao Mattei.

Author John Stewart Allitt describes his 1816 "initial exercises in operatic style",[19] the opera Il pigmalione, as well as his composition of portions of Olympiade and L'ira d'Achille in 1817, as no more than "suggest[ing] the work of a student".

[20] A coincidental meeting around April 1818 with an old school friend, Bartolomeo Merelli (who was to go on to a distinguished career), led to an offer to compose the music from a libretto which became Enrico di Borgogna.

Thus Enrico was presented on 14 November 1818, but with little success, the audience appearing to be more interested in the newly re-decorated opera house rather than the performances, which suffered from the last-minute withdrawal of the soprano Adelaide Catalani due to stage fright and the consequent omission of some her music.

However, with no other work forthcoming, the composer once again returned to Bergamo, where a cast of singers made up from the Venice production the month before, presented Enrico di Borgogna in his home town on 26 December.

[22] He spent the early months of 1819 working on some sacred and instrumental music, but little else came of his efforts until the latter part of the year when he wrote Il falegname di Livonia from a libretto by Gherardo Bevilacqua-Aldobrandini.

It is unclear as to how this connection came about: whether it had been at Merelli's suggestion or whether, as William Ashbrook speculates, it had been Mayr who had initially been approached by Paterni to write the opera but who, due to advancing age, had recommended his prize pupil.

Unanimous, sincere, universal was the applause he justly collected from the capacity audience....[26]Soon after 19 February, Donizetti left Rome for Naples, where he was to settle for a large part of his life.

It appears that he had asked Mayr for a letter of introduction,[27] but his fame had preceded him for, on 28th, the announcement of the summer season at the Teatro Nuovo in the Giornale del Regno delle Due Sicilie stated that it would include a Donizetti opera, describing the composer as: a young pupil of one of the most valued Maestros of the century, Mayer (sic), a large part of whose glory might be called ours, he having modeled his style on that of the great luminaries of the musical art sprung up among us.

[40] That summer was to see the successful presentations at the Teatro Nuovo of the adapted version of L'ajo nell'imbarazzo given as Don Gregorio and, a month later, a one-act melodramma or opera, Elvida, a pièce d'occasion for the birthday of Queen Maria of the Two Sicilies, which contained some florid music for the tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini; but it only received three performances.

[41] Writer John Stewart Allitt observes that, by 1827/28, three important elements in Donizetti's professional and personal life came together: Firstly, he met and began to work with the librettist Domenico Gilardoni, who wrote eleven librettos for him, beginning with Otto mesi in due ore in 1827 and continuing until 1833.

[49] In October 1838, Donizetti moved to Paris vowing never to have dealings with the San Carlo again after the King of Naples banned the production of Poliuto on the grounds that such a sacred subject was inappropriate for the stage.

No sooner was that accomplished than he was back in Paris to adapt the never-performed 1839 libretto L'Ange de Nisida as the French-language La favorite, the premiere of which took place on 2 December 1840.

Then he rushed back to Milan for Christmas, but returned almost immediately and by late February 1841 was preparing a new opera, Rita, ou Deux hommes et une femme.

Friends—including his brother-in-law, Antonio Vasselli (known as Totò)—continually attempted to persuade him to take up an academic position in Bologna rather than the Vienna court engagement, if for no other reason that it would give the composer a base from which to work and teach and not be continually exhausting himself with travel between cities.

He left Vienna on 1 July 1842 after the Spring Italian season, travelling to Milan, Bergamo (in order to see the now-aging Mayr, but where the deterioration of his own health became more apparent[54]), and then on to Naples in August, a city he had not visited since 1838.

In reporting the reaction to this opera in a teasing letter to Antonio Vasselli in Rome, he tried to build suspense, stating that "With the utmost sorrow, I must announce to you that last evening I have given my Maria di Rohan [and he names the singers].

"[63] Returning to Paris as quickly as possible, Donizetti left Vienna around 11 July 1843 in his newly purchased carriage and arrived on about 20th, immediately getting down to work on finishing Dom Sébastien, which he describes as a massive enterprise: "what a staggering spectacle.....I am terribly wearied by this enormous opera in five acts which carries bags full of music for singing and dancing.

Ashbrook comments on how he was viewed in that city, with "friends notic[ing] an alarming change in his physical condition",[66] and with his ability to concentrate and simply to remaining standing often being impaired.

While waiting to see if he could be relieved from writing a large-scale work if Giacomo Meyerbeer would allow Le Prophète to be staged instead that autumn, he looked forward to the arrival of his brother from Turkey in May and to the prospect of their traveling to Italy together that summer.

[68] What was worse were the rumours that it was not in fact Donizetti's work, although a report from Guido Zavadini suggested that it was probably a combination of elements which caused the failure, including the singers' difficulty in finding the right tone in the absence of the maestro, plus the heavily censored libretto.

By the end of May, no decision as what to do or where to go had been made, but—finally—he decided on Paris where he would claim a forfeit from the Opéra for the non-production of Le duc d'Albe, his unfulfilled second commission from 1840 which, although still unfinished, had a completed libretto.

They stated: We....certify that M. Gaetan (sic) Donizetti is the victim of a mental disease that brings disorder into his actions and his decisions; that it is to be desired in the interest of his preservation and his treatment that he be isolated in an establishment devoted to cerebral and intellectual maladies.

After three hours they arrived at the Maison Esquirol in Ivry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris,[79] where an explanation involving an accident was concocted to explain the need to spend the night at a "comfortable inn".

He sought a final opinion from the three doctors practicing at the clinic, and on 30 August, they provided a lengthy report outlining step-by-step the complete physical condition of their declining patient, concluding that the rigours of travel—the jolting of the carriage, for example—could bring on new symptoms or complications impossible to treat on such a journey.

She gave birth to three children, none of whom survived and, within a year of his parents' deaths—on 30 July 1837—she also died from what is believed to be cholera or measles, but Ashbrook speculates that it was connected to what he describes as a "severe syphilitic infection.