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Buon compleanno Gaetano Donizetti! 🎭🍷 Composer: Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) Work: Sinfonia (in re minore) per la morte di [Antonio] Capuzzi (1818) Performers: Camerata Budapest; László Kοvács (conductor) Painting: Jakob Becker (1810-1872) - Der vom Blitz erschlagene Schäfer (1844) HD image: Painting: Francesco Ferrari (1811-1878) - Ritratto di Gaetano Donizetti HD image: Further info: Listen free: --- (Domenico) Gaetano (Maria) Donizetti (Bergamo, 29 November 1797 - Bergamo 8 April 1848) Italian composer. His father was from a poor family of artisans who obtained the position of caretaker in the local pawnshop. At the age of nine, he entered the Lezioni Caritatevoli di Musica, a charity institution that served as the training school for the choristers of S. Maria Maggiore; he studied singing and harpsichord there, later studying harmony and counterpoint with J.5. Mayr. With the encouragement and assistance of Mayr, he enrolled in the Liceo Filarmonico Comunale in Bologna in 1815, where he studied counterpoint with Pilotti; later, he studied counterpoint and fugue with Padre Mattei. His first opera, Il Pigmalione (1816), appears never to have been performed in his lifetime. He composed two more operas in quick succession, but they were not performed. Leaving the Liceo in 1817, he was determined to have an opera produced. Mayr helped him to obtain his first professional engagement, a commission that resulted in Enrico di Borgogna, performed in November 1818 at the Teatro di S Luca in Venice. Up to this point Donizetti's professional activities had been confined to northern Italy and to smaller theatres, but in 1821 he was invited to compose a new opera for the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The resulting work, Zoraid di Granata, was Donizetti's most successful yet, winning him an invitation from the leading impresario of the time, Domenico Barbaja, to write for Naples. Donizetti settled in Naples in February 1822 and was to be based there for the next 16 years. With Anna Bolena (Milan, 1830), Donizetti established himself as a master of the Italian operatic theater. Composed for Pasta and Rubini, the opera was an overwhelming success. Within a few years it was produced in several major Italian theaters, and was also heard in London, Paris, Dresden, and other cities. Donizetti left Naples in October 1838 and moved permanently to Paris. In March 1842 Rossini attempted to persuade Donizetti to accept the post of maestro di cappella at the cathedral of San Petronio in Bologna, but Donizetti declined in order to accept the far more prestigious position of Hofkapellmeister to the Habsburg court in Vienna and court composer to the Austrian emperor. The last opera produced in his lifetime was Caterina Cornaro (Naples, 1844). By this time Donizetti began to age quickly; in 1845 his mental and physical condition progressively deteriorated as the ravages of syphilis reduced him to the state of an insane invalid. In 1846 he was placed in a mental clinic at Ivry, just outside Paris; in 1847 he was released into the care of his nephew, and was taken to his birthplace where he died on 8 April 1848.
