“Lucrezia Borgia,” which, though based on one of the most dramatic of stories and full of beautiful music, is not dramatically treated by the composer, seems to mark the distance about half-way between the styles of Rossini and Verdi. In it there is but little recitative, and in the treatment of the chorus we find the method which Verdi afterwards came to use exclusively. When Donizetti revisited Paris in 1840, he produced in rapid succession “I Martiri,” “La Fille du Regiment,” and “La Favorita.” In the second of these works Jenny Lind, Sontag, and Alboni won bright triumphs at a subsequent period.
FOOTNOTES:
[I] Mr. Chorley probably means “second-rate” as compared with the few very great names, which can be easily counted on the fingers.
[J] Admirers of the author of “Don Pasquale” and “Lucia” may be interested in knowing that Donizetti was of Scotch descent. His grandfather was a native of Perthshire, named Izett. The young Scot was beguiled by the fascinating tongue of a recruiting-sergeant into his Britannic majesty’s service, and was taken prisoner by General La Hoche during the latter’s invasion of Ireland. Already tired of a private’s life, he accepted the situation, and was induced to become the French general’s private secretary. Subsequently he drifted to Italy, and married an Italian lady of some rank, denationalising his own name into Donizetti. The Scottish predilections of our composer show themselves in the music of “Don Pasquale,” noticeably in “Com’ e gentil;” and the score of “Lucia” is strongly flavoured by Scottish sympathy and minstrelsy.
[K] Victor Hugo did the same thing with Verdi’s “Ernani,” and other French authors followed with legal actions. The matter was finally arranged on condition of an indemnity being paid to the original French dramatists. The principle involved had been established nearly two centuries before. In a privilege granted to St. Amant in 1653 for the publication of his “Moïse Sauvé,” it was forbidden to extract from that epic materials for a play or poem. The descendants of Beaumarchais fought for the same concession, and not very long ago it was decided that the translators and arrangers of “Le Nozze di Figaro” for the Théâtre Lyrique must share their receipts with the living representatives of the author of “Le Mariage de Figaro.”
II.
“La Favorita,” the story of which was drawn from “L’Ange de Nisida,” and founded in the first instance on a French play, “Le Comte de Commingues,” was put on the stage at the Académie with a magnificent cast and scenery, and achieved a success immediately great, for as a dramatic opera it stands far in the van of all the composer’s productions. The whole of the grand fourth act, with the exception of one cavatina, was composed in three hours. Donizetti had been dining at the house of a friend, who was engaged in the evening to go to a ball. On leaving the house his host, with profuse apologies, begged the composer to stay and finish his coffee, of which Donizetti was inordinately fond. The latter sent out for music paper, and, finding himself in the vein for composition, went on writing till the completion of the work. He had just put the final stroke to the celebrated “Viens dans un autre patrie” when his friend returned at one in the morning to congratulate him on his excellent method of passing the time, and to hear the music sung for the first time from Donizetti’s own lips.
After visiting Rome, Milan, and Vienna, for which last city he wrote “Linda di Chamouni,” our composer returned to Paris, and in 1843 wrote “Don Pasquale” for the Théâtre Italien, and “Don Sebastian” for the Académie. Its lugubrious drama was fatal to the latter, but the brilliant gaiety of “Don Pasquale,” rendered specially delightful by such a cast as Grisi, Mario, Tamburini, and Lablache, made it one of the great art attractions of Paris, and a Fortunatus purse for the manager. The music of this work, perhaps, is the best ever written by Donizetti, though it lacks the freshness and sentiment of his “Elisir d’Amore,” which is steeped in rustic poetry and tenderness like a rose wet with dew. The production of “Maria di Rohan” in Vienna the same year, an opera with some powerful dramatic effects and bold music, gave Ronconi the opportunity to prove himself not merely a fine buffo singer, but a noble tragic actor. In this work Donizetti displays that rugged earnestness and vigour so characteristic of Verdi; and, had his life been greatly prolonged, we might have seen him ripen into a passion and power at odds with the elegant frivolity which for the most part tainted his musical quality. Donizetti’s last opera, “Catarina Comaro,” the sixty-third one represented, was brought out at Naples in the year 1844, without adding aught to his reputation. Of this composer’s long list of works only ten or eleven retain any hold on the stage, his best serious operas being “La Favorita,” “Linda,” “Anna Bolena,” “Lucrezia Borgia,” and “Lucia;” the finest comic works, “L’Elisir d’Amore,” “La Fille du Regiment,” and “Don Pasquale.”
In composing Donizetti never used the pianoforte, writing with great rapidity and never making corrections. Yet curious to say, he could not do anything without a small ivory scraper by his side, though never using it. It was given him by his father when commencing his career, with the injunction that, as he was determined to become a musician, he should make up his mind to write as little rubbish as possible, advice which Donizetti sometimes forgot.