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What has become of the threescore and more operas of Donizetti, and the forty of Rossini some of which for years monopolized the stage so completely the world over that Weber and Beethoven were ignored even in Vienna and the German capitals? They are dead, and all efforts to revive them have been futile.
On reaching his library at home, Donizetti unearthed from a pile of dusty manuscript tumbled under the piano what appeared to be a song. "Take that," he said to his friend, "to Mario at once that he may learn it without delay." This song was the far-famed "Com e gentil." The serenade was sung with a tambourine accompaniment played by Lablache himself, concealed from the audience.
Here we see Donizetti at his best, because here he writes according to the natural dictates of his imagination, not in accordance with the foolish or depraved taste of fashionable connoisseurs. The scene of 'La Fille du Régiment' is laid in the Tyrol, where Tonio, a peasant, has had the good fortune to save the life of Marie, the vivandière of a French regiment.
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, denationalizing his own name into Donizetti.
I said it appeared to me he had practically expressed the opinion that Donizetti was a more precious gift of God to man than Dante. Put like that, he did not hold to what he had said and confessed he had been speaking without due consideration. But Peppino said that in some respects Donizetti was a better man than Dante; he was smoother and better tempered, "and many things like this."
Essentially a second-rate composer,* Donizetti struck out some first-rate things in a happy hour, such as the last act of 'La Favorita." * Mr. Chorley probably means "second-rate" as compared with the few very great names, which can be easily counted on the fingers.
* Bellini was born in 1802, nine years after his contemporary and rival, Donizetti, and died in 1835, thirteen years before.
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 harmony is no doubt a little developed, Wagner augmenting his fifths with a G sharp where Donizetti would have put his fingers in his ears and screamed for G natural.
Donizetti arrived at his freshest creations at a time when there seemed but little left for him except the trite and threadbare. It is, however, a noteworthy fact, that the latest Italian composers have shown themselves quite weak in composing expressly for the orchestra. No operatic overture since "William Tell" has been produced by this school of music, worthy to be rendered in a concert-room.
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