Winter 2011 Offering:

The Complete Operas of Donizetti

Part II: The Age of Donizetti

(14 weeks beginning in mid-January)

This course continues the special two-part survey of the over 70 operas of Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). Each part of The Complete Operas of Donizetti is a self-contained course; it is not necessary to have taken Part I to enroll in Part II.

Part II, The Age of Donizetti examines in depth Donizetti's final twenty or so works, beginning with Lucia di Lammermoor, and ending with his final, massive French Grand Opera Dom Sabastien.

Donizetti was the leading exponent of that glorious flowering of Italian opera in the early 19th century now labeled the “Age of Bel Canto.” The course will first show how Donizetti expressed the essence of Bel Canto and the Italian Romantic spirit of the 1830's through operas rooted in fixed Italian forms elaborated through exquisite vocal virtuosity.  At the same time this chronological study will follow the evolution of these salient musical forms toward the music drama of Verdi soon to follow.  Among the works to be examined in Donizetti's extraordinary final decade of composition for Italy are the following:

•Lucia di Lammermoor (Naples,1835), generally considered the archetype of Italian romantic opera

•Belisario  (Venice, 1836), a clamorous success, soon to eclipse Lucia in popularity

•Il Campanello  and Betly  (Naples, 1836), two lovely one-act farses, both set to Donizetti's own libretti

•L'assedio di Calais (Naples, 1836), the opera Donizetti himself called his "most carefully worked-out score," in anticipation of later performances at the Paris Opera

•Pia de Tolomei  (Venice, 1837), written especially for Fanny Persiani, the renowned first Lucia

•Roberto Devereux  (Naples, 1837), whose second act alone "achieves, in its own very Italian way, the Wagnerian ideal of music drama" (William Ashbrook)

•Adelia  (Rome, 1841), a three-act opera seria with much expressive music, the last of Donizetti's late operas to receive a 20th-century revival)

•Maria Padilla  (Milan, 1842), one of Donizetti's most powerful and unduly neglected scores (receiving an important performance by Opera Boston this spring.)

The course will also show how Donizetti's style was further enriched during this period as a result of commissions for Vienna and Paris and the need to cater to more sophisticated audiences. Linda di Chamounix  (1842), a work with which Donizetti hoped to win over the demanding Viennese public, would be the last and best of his delightful opera semi-seria. Maria di Rohan (1843), the second of his two operas for Vienna, becomes the final and most powerful of his many Romantic melodramas.

In Paris, Donizetti's operas were so successful that Berlioz quipped:  "M. Donizetti appears to treat us as a conquered country; this is a veritable invasion. One can no longer speak of the Paris opera houses, but only of M. Donizetti's opera houses."  The great Paris compositions include:

•Les Martyrs  (Opera,1840,) a revision of his 1838 unperformed opera for Naples, Poliuto , a work that stands at the head of the line of Itaian-based French grand operas pointing toward Verdi's Aida and Otello

•La fille du Regiment (Opera-Comique, 1840), the delightful two-act opera-comique  which chalked up forty-four performances in the first year alone

•La Favorite  (Opera,1840) the elegant French grand opera which ranks among Donizetti's best works  and remained in the repertory of the Opera for nearly 80 years

•Don Pasquale (Theatre Italien, 1843) Donizetti's comic masterpiece, recovering the classical heritage of Mozart

•Dom Sebastien  (Paris, 1843), Donizetti's towering  five-act French Grand opera, the last and grandest of his three operas in this style.

By the end of this extraordinary decade of composition, Donizetti's operas dominated the opera houses of every country in Europe.  Indeed, without Donizetti, as conductor Richard Bonynge asserts, "the whole history of opera would have been very different."

Come hear for yourself how the glorious Age of Donizetti lives on.