Donizetti's Serious Operas

Extract

Until recently Donizetti was not respectable enough for musicology. He was remembered for two or three comedies; yet he and Rossini both devoted their mature years almost entirely to serious opera. Of Donizetti's 70 stage works, a few of which are lost, exactly half belong to the opera seria class (that includes two French grand operas); three are early works on Classical subjects, nine are opere semiserie, and 23 are comedies or farces. But those figures do not give a true picture. In the first place, twelve of the comic operas but only one of the serious are in a single act. Second, if we take the end of 1828 as a dividing line—which is roughly when Donizetti reached maturity—we find that before that date he composed 29 operas, of which only six are serious, whereas after it he produced eight comedies (five in one act), four semiseria (one in one act), and 29 full-length serious operas. Clearly he regarded Romantic tragedy as his main line.