Donizetti was born in 1797 in the town of Bergamo in Northern Italy. He had the great fortune to be the student of Johann Simon Mayr, a Bavarian composer and teacher who was a leading figure in the development of serious opera in Italy. After this strong compositional foundation, he attended the conservatory in Bologna and studied with teachers that Rossini had worked with just a few years before. And, like Rossini, he ended up in Naples working for the Teatro San Carlo after proving himself with the success of one of his early operas in Rome. His work in Naples including a professorship at the Naples conservatory, but during these years he frequently had the opportunity to write operas for various theatres throughout Italy: in Milan, Palermo, Florence and Rome. It was his opera Anna Bolena, about the second wife of Henry VIII that shot him to fame with its production at the Teatro Carcano in Milan. The opera was so well thought of that it was repeated in Paris and London and generated in those cities a demand for more of the composer’s works. By the early 1830s Donizetti was an international figure.
This brings us to the period immediately prior to the composition of Lucia. At this time Donizetti was associating himself with the greatest singers of the age: the sopranos Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran, the tenor Giovanni Rubini, the baritone Giorgio Ronconi and the bass Filippo Galli. These singers were the true operatic superstars of their day. In 1835 he was invited to Paris where he had the opportunity to write his first opera for a French audience. While there he absorbed the international flavor of that city, meeting some of the greatest composers and artists of the day, including Frederic Chopin.
Returning from Paris to Naples, he embarked on the score for Lucia di Lammermoor, intended for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the center of most of his activity. For this opera he was going to have two more great singers in the cast: the soprano Fanny Persiani and the tenor Gilbert Duprez. But the management of the theatre was badly run, there were delays in the promised libretto, and Donizetti was getting increasingly impatient. He was finally paired with the great librettist Salvatore Cammarano with whom he wrote a number of further operas and who himself became one of the important early librettists for Giuseppe Verdi. Cammarano took Donizetti’s chosen subject, The Bride of Lammermoor, and reduced it to its most basic plot. In the process some important characters in the Scott original were lost, but the story was tightened and made far more dramatic in its overall impact. Donizetti completed the score in six weeks getting it ready for the stage in time for its premiere on September 26, 1835. In the midst of the flurry of compositional activity during that summer, the king of Naples fired the entire management of the theatre and funding for the company was lost and then mysteriously restored. But all went well on opening night, and Lucia was an instant success.
Success was probably due as much to the greatness of the singers as it was to Donizetti’s brilliant score. Persiani was in fine voice and her performance of the famous mad scene brought the audience to near frenzy. Duprez was similarly well received, as it was this tenor who began taking high Cs from the chest voice rather than from the weaker, ethereal head voice preferred by earlier tenors. The excitement and drama of the sound was hard to resist and by the 1840s every Italian tenor was copying him, making it possible for Verdi to write some of his most demanding tenor roles.
The opera captured the imagination of the Romantic audience, fulfilling their demand for gothic stories, supernatural chills and fine singing all at the same time. And although the opera went through a period of nearly fatal cuts by well-meaning producers, it has survived intact and is performed today to universal acclaim by singers who can meet Donizetti’s vocal and dramatic demands.
After the success of Lucia his operas continued to conquer Europe, with one great opera house after another producing his ever popular works. But in 1835 his life took a personal turn towards tragedy, with both his parents dying within weeks of each other, and his wife Virginia dying of cholera during a frightening epidemic. On top of that, none of his three children lived beyond a few days after birth and he himself was diagnosed with syphilis. We notice that he set himself a frantic pace for work during his last years before the effects of the disease began to interrupt his daily life in 1844. In that time he composed Roberto Devereux, La favorite, La fille du regiment, Maria Padilla, Linda di Chamounix, Dom Sebastien and Don Pasquale. He lasted four long and painfully tragic years suffering terribly with the effects of his illness, in and out of sanitoriums until 1848 when he finally died.
The composer’s works were so well thought of that Hector Berlioz remarked, “One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris but only of the opera houses of Monsieur Donizetti!” It was by his operas that all young Italian composers were forced to be compared both by the fanatical operatic public and impresarios throughout Europe. It was the opera Nabucco by another young Northern Italian which shared the La Scala season of 1842 with Donizetti’s Maria Padilla, signaling the appearance of the next great composer of opera: Giuseppe Verdi.