Donizetti was received at Bergamo by the Maestro Dolci, one of his dearest friends. Here paralysis again attacked him, and a few days afterwards, on the 8th of April, 1848, he expired, in his fifty-second year, having, during the twenty-seven years of his life, as a composer, written sixty-four operas; several masses and vesper services; and innumerable pieces of chamber music, including, besides arias, cavatinas, and vocal concerted pieces, a dozen quartetts for stringed instruments, a series of songs and duets, entitled Les soirées du Pausilippe, a cantata entitled la Morte d'Ugolino, &c., &c.
Antoine, Donizetti's attendant at Ivry, became much attached to him, and followed him to Bergamo, whence he forwarded to M. Adolphe Adam, a letter describing his illustrious patient's last moments, and the public honours paid to his memory at the funeral.
DONIZETTI'S DEATH.
"More than four thousand persons," he relates, "were present at the ceremony. The procession was composed of the numerous clergy of Bergamo; the most illustrious members of the community and its environs, and of the civic guard of the town and suburbs. The discharges of musketry, mingled with the light of three or four hundred large torches, presented a fine effect—the whole was enhanced by the presence of three military bands, and the most propitious weather it was possible to behold. The service commenced at ten o'clock in the morning, and did not conclude until half-past two. The young gentlemen of Bergamo insisted on bearing the remains of their illustrious fellow-citizen, although the cemetery in which they finally rested lay at a distance of a league-and-a-half from the town. The road there was crowded along its whole length by people who came from the surrounding country to witness the procession—and, to give due praise to the inhabitants of Bergamo, never, hitherto, had such great honours been bestowed upon any member of that city."
Bellini, who was Donizetti's contemporary, but who was born nine years after him, and died thirteen years before, was a native of Sicily. His father was an organist at Catania, and under him the future composer of Norma and La Sonnambula, took his first lessons in music. A Sicilian nobleman, struck by the signs of genius which young Bellini evinced at an early age, persuaded his father to send him to Naples, supporting his arguments with an offer to pay his expenses at the celebrated Conservatorio. Here one of Bellini's fellow pupils was Mercadante, the future composer of Il Giuramento, an opera which, in spite of the frequent attempts of the Italian singers to familiarize the English public with its numerous beauties, has never been much liked in this country. I do not say that it has not been justly appreciated on the whole, but that the grace of some of the melodies, the acknowledged merit of the orchestration and the elegance and distinction which seem to me to characterize the composer's style generally, have not been accepted as compensating for his want of passion and of that spontaneity without which the expression of strong emotion of any kind is naturally impossible. Mercadante could never have written Rigoletto, but, probably, a composer of inferior natural gifts to Verdi might, with a taste for study and a determination to bring his talent to perfection, have produced a work of equal artistic merit to Il Giuramento. And here we must take leave of Mercadante, whose place in the history of the opera is not a considerable one, and who, to the majority of English amateurs, is known only by his Bella adorata, a melody of which Verdi has shown his estimation by borrowing it, diluting it, and re-arranging it with a new accompaniment for the tenor's song in Luisa Miller.
RUBINI.
I should think Mercadante must have written better exercises, and passed better examinations at the Conservatorio than his young friend Bellini, though the latter must have begun at an earlier age to compose operas. Bellini's first dramatic work was written and performed while he was still a student. Encouraged by its success, he next composed music to a libretto already "set" by Generali, and entitled Adelson e Salvino. Adelson was represented before the illustrious Barbaja, who was at that time manager of the two most celebrated theatres in Italy, the St. Carlo at Naples, and La Scala at Milan,—as well as of the Italian opera at Vienna, to say nothing of some smaller operatic establishments also under his rule. The great impresario, struck by Bellini's promise, commissioned him to write an opera for Naples, and, in 1826, his Bianca e Fernando was produced at the St. Carlo. This work was so far successful, that it obtained a considerable amount of applause from the public, while it inspired Barbaja with so much confidence that he entrusted the young composer, now twenty years of age, with the libretto of il Pirata, to be composed for La Scala. The tenor part was written specially for Rubini, who retired into the country with Bellini, and studied, as they were produced, the simple, touching airs which he afterwards delivered on the stage with such admirable expression.
Il Pirata was received with enthusiasm by the audiences of La Scala, and the composer was requested to write another work for the same theatre. La Straniera was brought out at Milan in 1828, the principal parts being entrusted to Donzelli, Tamburini, and Madame Tosi. This, Bellini's third work, appears, on the whole, to have maintained, but scarcely to have advanced, his reputation. Nevertheless, when it was represented in London soon after its original production, it was by no means so favourably received as Il Pirato had been.
Bellini's Zaira, executed at Parma, in 1829, was a failure—soon, however, to be redeemed by his fifth work, Il Capuletti ed i Montecchi, which was written for Venice, and was received with all possible expressions of approbation. In London, the new operatic version of Romeo and Juliet was not particularly admired, and owed what success it obtained entirely to the acting and singing of Madame Pasta in the principal part. It may be mentioned that the libretto of Bellini's I Montecchi had already served his master, Zingarelli, for his opera of Romeo e Julietta.
LA SONNAMBULA.