Small picture of Donizetti

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.   

 

 

 

 

Donizetti Society Publications

Standard reference books on Donizetti

Other books on Donizetti

Books describing aspects of Italian opera of this era

 

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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Other books on Donizetti

 

 John Stewart Allitt,  GAETANO DONIZETTI – Pensiero, musica, opere scelte,     Milano: Edizione Villadiseriane, 2003   www.villadiseriane.it  

 John Stewart Allitt,  DONIZETTI – in the light of romanticism and the teaching of Johann Simon Mayr, Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK: Element Books, 1991. Also see John's website http://www.johnstewartallitt.com/

Annalisa Bini & Jeremy Commons, Le prime rappresentazioni delle opere di Donizetti nella stampa coeva, Milan: Skira, 1997

John Black, Donizetti's Operas in Naples 1822-1848, London:The Donizetti Society, 1982

A further picture of Donizetti

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

Egidio Saracino Ed. Tutti i libretti di Donizetti, Milan: Garzanti, 1993

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

Clarissa Lablache Cheer, The Great Lablache, (Xlibris Corporation, 1663 Liberty Drive, Suite 200, Bloomington IN 47403, USA). The imposing bass Luigi Lablache (1795-1858) dominated the operatic stage for almost half a century singing in operas by many of the major operatic composers of his day and with many of the great stars of that era

Basil Walsh's Michael W. Balfe, with a forward by Richard Bonynge, Irish Academic Press, has now been published, see www.balfebiography.com for more details.  Some of  Basil's other work in this area can be seen  at www.britishandirishworld.com and www.catherinehayes.com .  For people interested in this music, there is also the recording of his The Maid of Artois by Victorian Opera NorthWest, see www.victorianoperanorthwest.org .

Picture of Balfe

 

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.

Dr. Emre Araci’s biography of Giuseppe Donizetti (1788-1856), the elder brother of Gaetano, who served under Sultan Mahmud II as Instructor-General of the Imperial Ottoman Military Bands, has been published in Turkish by Yapi Kredi Yayinlari in Istanbul. As the first comprehensive biography of Giuseppe, the book includes many references to original and recently-surfaced documents located in the archives in Bergamo, Naples, Paris and Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. Rossini's letter to Giuseppe Donizetti enquiring after the reception of his military marches by the Sultan and Liszt’s letter to his solicitor friend Adolphe Crémieux for advice in securing the release of Gaetano Donizetti from the French police before his ill-fated return to Bergamo are some of the documents surfacing in Dr Araci’s book for the first time.

The product of three years research, Giuseppe Donizetti – the Italian maestro of the Ottoman court, brings back the glories of an era when Italian opera was

Giuseppe Donizetti

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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