The following includes details on books on Donizetti, his work and his era. Books and scores for Mayr are held on the Mayr page and information on scores on the scores page.   Please contact info@donizettisociety.com with any suggestions for additional publications.   

Fondazione Donizetti Bibliography and publications

The Fondazione Donizetti site, http://www.donizetti.org/biblioteca/, includes an extensive bibliography of over 700 items.  They also publish books, articles and conference proceedings on Donizetti and his era, see here.

Donizetti Society Publications

The Donizetti Society publishes a regular Newsletter and an occasional Journal. It has also published books, such as Donizetti's Operas in Naples 1822-1848, by John Black (1982) and reprinted 19th century vocal scores of works such as Roberto Devereux, Caterina Cornaro and Les Martyrs as well as printing a more recent vocal score prepared by Graeme Young of L'esule di Roma.

Standard reference books on Donizetti

William Ashbrook: Donizetti and his Operas, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press 1982.  Ashbrook also wrote an earlier life entitled Donizetti in 1965.

Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Volume 7,  London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 2001, pp.761-796.    The 1980 edition article, by William Ashbrook and Julian Budden, was also reprinted in The New Grove Masters of Italian Opera, London: Papermac, 1984, pp. 93-154.

Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Volume 1, London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1997, pp.1201-1221.  This material is also available to subscribers to Grove Music Online.

Egidio Saracino (ed), Tutti I libretti di Donizetti, Garzanti Editore, 1993.

Herbert Weinstock, Donizetti, London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1964. (UK publication date).

Guido Zavadini  Donizetti: Vita - Musiche- Epistolario,  Bergamo, 1948

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Other books on Donizetti

Gilles de Van, Gaetano Donizetti, Paris: Bleu nuit éditeur, 2009.  A review by Stella Rollet can be found here.

James P. Cassaro, Gaetano Donizetti - A Guide to Research, New York: Garland Publishing, 2000

Leopold M Kantner, ed., Donizetti in Wien, papers from a symposium in various languages (ISBN 3-7069-0006-8 / ISSN 156,00-8921). Published by Primo Ottocento, available from Edition Praesens.

Philip Gossett, Anna Bolena and the Artistic Maturity of Gaetano Donizetti,   Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985

Philippe Thanh, Donizetti, Actes Sud/Classica, Paris, 2005, 192 p. ISBN: 2-7427-5481-4
This is the first complete modern study in French on Donizetti. See http://www.actes-sud.fr/ficheisbn.php?isbn=9782742754816 . Alex Weatherson in his review of the book in Newsletter 95 commented that " the text is balanced and the judgement mature: [Thanh] is at his best when he touches upon France and Donizetti's Parisian career as you would expect, when the insights gather and the ambience is very skillfully evoked".

 Books describing aspects of Italian and French opera of this era

Dr. Thomas Lindner, Donizettiana et alia musicologica Scripta minora.  Praesens, Vienna, 2011. A collection of essays on Italian opera of the first half of the 19th century.

Federico Spinetti, ed., Giuseppe Donizetti Pascià, a collection of essays on Donizetti's brother Giuseppe, who was musical director for the Turkish Sultan. Fondazione Donizetti, Bergamo, 2010. See also Dr. Araci's book below.

Geoffrey S. Riggs, The assoluta voice in opera, 1797-1847, McFarland  & Co, 2009.  The book traces bel canto soprano singing from Cherubini to early Verdi and considers both singers of the time and of today. Extracts can be seen here.

Philip Gossett, Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008

Michael Jahn, Die Wiener Hopofer von 1826 bis 1848, ISBN: 978 3 85450 148 0, Verlag Der Apfel, Austria,  http://www.verlagderapfel.at includes Donizetti's career in Vienna.

Michael Jahn, Di tanti palpiti...Italiener in Wien,   ISBN: 978-3-85450-196-1, Verlag Der Apfel, Austria,  http://www.verlagderapfel.at. A more wide ranging book on Italians at the Vienna Hofoper.

John Black, The Italian Romantic Libretto, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984

David Charlton, editor, The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. A series of essays exploring many different aspects of  grand opera many of whose personalities and works overlap the end of the bel canto era.                         

Sieghart Döhring and Arnold Jacobshagen, Meyerbeer und das europäische Musiktheater, published by Laaber-Verlag

Mark Everist, Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-Century Paris, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2005.

David Kimbell, Italian Opera, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.  A broad sweep of  Italian opera but with a substantial section on Romantic opera of this era. 

John Rosselli, Music and Musicians in Nineteenth Century Italy, London: B.T.Batsford, 1991.

John Rosselli, Singers in Italian Opera, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

William Weaver, The Golden Century of Italian Opera, London:Thames and Hudson, 1980.

Sebastian Werr, Errico Petrella (ISBN 3-7069-0040-8 / ISSN 156,00-8921). Available from Edition Praesens.

Dr. Emre Araci, Giuseppe Donizetti – the Italian maestro of the Ottoman court, ( Donizetti Paşa, Osmanlı Sarayının İtalyan Maestrosu), Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, Istanbul, November, 2006, 260 pages, ISBN: 975-08-1153-4.

popular in the palaces by the Bosphorus and the sultans proceeded to the mosque to the strains of Donizetti and Rossini marches.

(Dr Araci would be interested to hear from anyone who can advise him in getting an English translation published - emrearaci(at)yahoo.com.)

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