GAETANO DONIZETTI, Italian Composer (1797-1848). Gaetano Donizetti free midi download

GAETANO DONIZETTI
29^thNovember 1797 --- 8^thApril 1848

Gaetano Donizetti was born in 1797 in Bergamo, located just outside the city walls. Donizetti family where very poor and had no
tradition of music, but his father wanted his sons to join a music school in Bergamo, founded and run by Simone Mayr, a German
composer mainly known for his Opera's. One of the sons was rejected because he was too old but Gaetano was accepted. Donizetti
was lacking in singing through a thoat condition but Mayr saw that Gaetano "surpasses all others in musical progress" so he was
able to persuade the authorities to show Donizetti talents were worthy, and he be kept at the school. He did not leave the school
until 1815

Mayr continued to support Donizetti and managed to persuaded Gaetano's parents to allow him to continue his studies, by Mayr
securing funding in Bergamo. Donizetti went with letters of recommendation to travel to Bologna, one of his first opera pieces was
Il pigmalione (1816), but the work soon dried up and his mentor Mayr persuaded Dpnizetti to go back to Bergamo, were he began
his "quartet years" phase as well as composing for piano 1817.

In 1818 his father insisted that he give lessons to earn his living but Donizetti revolted and enlisted in the army. His regiment was
quarted at Venice, and here the young composer wrote his Opera Enrico comte di Borgogna in 1818.

The success of this work and of a second opera brought out in the following year, established Donizetti reputation. He obtained his
discharged fron the army, and henceforth his opera's followed each other in rapid and uninterruted succession at the rate of three
of four a year.

Although he had to contend successively with two such dangerous rivals as Rossini and Bellini he succeeded in taking firm hold of
the public, and the brilliant reception accorded to his Anna Bolena at Milan, where Pasta and Rubini appeared in it, carried his name
beyound the limits of his own country. In 1835 Donizetti went for the first time to Paris, where however his Marino Falliro failed to
hold its own against Bellini's Puritani, then recently produced at the Theatre Italian. The disappointed composer went to Naples
where the enormous success of his Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), consoled him for his failure in Paris.

Returning to Paris he produced at the Opera Comique what proved eventually his most popular opera La Fille du regiment, but it was
not till after the work had made the rounds of the theatre's of Germany and Italy that it found favour with the French. A revival in
Paris of his Lucrezia Borgia, produced at Milan in 1833, was interrupted by Victor Hugo's claim for infringement of copyright, and the
libretto was altered. La Facorita generally considered Donizetti's masterpiece was produced in 1840.

His next important work Linda di Chamounix, was written for Vienna, where it was received most favourably in 1842, and the same
success attended the production of Don Pasquale in Paris in 1843. Soon after this event in the first signs of a fatal disease, cause to a
great extent by overwork, began to show it self. The utter failure of Don Sebastian a large opera produced soon after Don Pasquale is
said to have hastened the catastrophe.

He had a paralytic stroke in 1844, deprived Donizetti of his reason, and for four years he lingered on in a state of mental and physical
prostration. A visit to his country was proposed as a last recourse, but he reached his native place only to die there on April 1st, 1848.

The sum total of his opera's amounts to sixty-four. the large number of his works accounts for many of their chief defects. His rapidity
of working made all revision impossible. It is said that he wrote the instrumentation of a whole opera within thirty hours. Yet it may
be doubted whether more elaboration would have essentially improved his work, for the dramatic last act of the Favorita, a infinitly
superior to the preceding ones, also said to have been the product of a single night.

Without boasting the sweetened of Bellini or the sparkle of Rossini, Donizetti won the popular ear by his flow of melody and by his
rare skill in writing for the voice, to which qualities may be added his power of humorous delineation, as enivced in Don Pasquale
and L'Elisir d'amore, which works will probably last as long as anything he ever wrote.
Copyright 1953 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated on 2024
By Steven Ritchie

And now for the Music

NEW (4277)"Una Furtive Iagrima (The Secret Tear)". Sequenced by Steven Ritchie.

(3058)"The Rataplan". Sequenced by Steven Ritchie.

(3060)"Maria Stuarda Overture". Sequenced by Mehmet Dikmen.

(3061)"Fantasy on Lucrezia Borgia, Part.1 Trio". Sequenced by W.Pepperdine.

(3062)"Fanatsy on Lucrezia Borgia, Pt.2 Drinking Song, Duo, Finale". Sequenced by W.Pepperdine.
I would like to extend my thanks to Bjorn Lengton for these lovely donated pieces.
(3063"From the opera L'Elisir d'amore-- adina's cavatina ", Sequenced by Bjorn Lengton.

(3064)"From the opera L'Elisir d'amore-- balcore's cavatina", Sequenced by Bjorn Lengton.

(3065)"From the opera L'Elisir d'amore-- the preludio (=overture)", Sequenced by Bjorn Lengton.

(3066)"From opera L'Elisir d'amore-- una furtiva lagrima (= romanza)", Sequenced by Bjorn Lengton.

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