Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

WELL, BERGAMO

ooming back in, now, and the time has come for another opera composer to get his fifteen minuets of fame. Post 1829, he was becoming as popular in Paris - remember, the current centre of the music world - as he was in his native Bergamo. He was the final three-ninths of the opera triumvirate that was: Rossini, Bellini and… Donizet [pause for full Italian effect] ti.

Donizet ti was a man who'd been given a huge shot in the arm, as far as composing operas went, in 1829, the year Rossini stopped composing. The shot in the arm was, well, that Rossini stopped composing, frankly. Up to this point, Donizet ti had produced more or less one opera every twenty-five minutes. OK, I say 'more or less', but, to be fair, it was in fact less. OK. It just seemed like he was producing an opera every twenty-five minutes. And, also to be fair -because I do like to be fair - more or less ALL of them were not so good. Of course, the audiences enjoyed them enough, and so he kept churning them out. Well, why not, I suppose. Who would be prepared to say they would have done any differently? But then, all of a sudden, Rossini made his sudden and unexpected move - suddenly and unexpectedly retreating from music. And, lo and behold, the effect on Donizet ti was astonishing. He started to write his best ever stuff. In fact, all his operas which could fairly stake a claim to be labelled 'masterpieces' came from the time after Rossini had decided to shtay shtum: Anna- Bolena, Maria Stuarda, Don Pasquale, Lucia di Ilkley Moor/ and, my own personal favourite, the darling Uelisir d'amore - The Elixir of Love.

The Elixir of Love, from 1832, is a comic opera that conceals a divine tragic kernel in its best-known aria, 'Una furtiva lagrima'. MMMMMMMMMMWHAH! A gorgeous aria, on many people's list of Top Five Tracks to Propose To, alongside 'Long-Haired Lover from Liverpool' by Little Jimmy Osmond. Donizet ti is said to have composed the entire opera in only two weeks - which, if it's true, makes it all the more astonishing. Try it some time. The Royal Opera House used to have an 'oldie but goldie' production of it, which was quite charming in a quaint, country bumpkin sort of way. The only thing which I ever found hard to take about it was the fact that I always seemed to see it with Pavarotti in the role of Nemorino - the guy who gets to sing 'Una furtiva lagrima'. This is meant to be the young, virile lover, but sometimes the sight of Big Luc in a country smock, trying to gambol and skip, strained my limited suspension of disbelief. And in opera, that's saying something.

A full five years and, it would seem, a whole million miles separate UElisir d'amore by Donizet ti from the next MASSIVE work by Bonkers Berlioz, the Grande Messe des Morts. In between, he'd had a strange run-in with Paganini, which I want to tell you all about.