Composer of Italian origin, whose talent improved in Paris and Vienna. The author of almost 70 operas, many small pieces of music. Over the centuries, his talent continues to inspire and amaze listeners.
Biography
Gaetano Donizetti was born in Bergamo in 1979. His parents were artisans, his father earned a living working as a watchman, his mother worked as a weaver. Gaetano's older brother, Giuseppe, also pursued a musical career.
When the boy was 9 years old, he began his studies at the Charity School of Music, headed by Simon Mayr, an Italian composer of German descent. The teacher highly appreciated Gaetano's successes, recognizing the boy as his best student. Mayr believed that Gaetano should choose music as a professional activity, and in order to support the young protégé, he wrote the opera "The Little Composer". The opera was staged by students of the Simon Mayr School.
In 1812 he began his studies at the Bologna Music Lyceum. At the time of Gaetano's admission, the Lyceum is very popular, because Rossini graduated from it. Donizetti was lucky to learn from the same teacher who studied with Rossini.
Donizetti finished his studies in 1817. By this time he had created several one-act operas, sacred compositions, works for quartets.
Creation
His first works written for the general public, Enrico, Count of Burgundy, staged in 1818 and The Livonian Carpenter, staged a year later, were well received by the public.
But for a long time he was considered a minor composer, the palm was in the hands of Rossini at that time.
General recognition came to him years later, in 1834, after the staging of the opera Anne Boleyn, the libretto is based on the fate of the wife of the English king Henry VIII.
Since 1834 he has been working with enthusiasm at the Nepolsk Conservatory, first as a professor and later as a director.
In 1840 he moved to Paris. French society at first perceives his work rather cool. But Donizetti does not give up, improving his skills more and more.
In 1843 he created the comic opera Don Pasquale, which became very popular in Parisian society.
Also in the forties he staged his plays in Vienna, Austria. Here he quickly won the sympathy of the royal family, in 1842 he received the title of court composer. In gratitude to the king and Austrian society, Donizetti composed and staged the opera Linda di Chamouni for Vienna.
In the last years of his creative activity, he wrote and staged several operas, which the public received coldly.
Personal life
In 1944 he stops working due to the development of a serious mental illness, he moves to the city where he was born.
Dies in 1848. Buried in Bergamo, near the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
