GAETANO DONIZETTI, Presentation - Ai Voice

Bergamo is universally considered the city of Gaetano Donizetti, where the composer was born on November 29, 1797, and where he returned at the end of his life.
His talent blossomed thanks to the “Charitable Music Lessons,” a school founded in the early 19th century by the German composer Johann Simon Mayr to offer poor boys a free and complete musical education. Donizetti entered as a child, at the school’s headquarters in Santa Maria Maggiore, and it was in those very classrooms that the current conservatory named after him later took shape — still today the heart of musical education in Bergamo.

His career was astonishingly rapid: in just a few years, he composed over seventy operas, including Anna Bolena, L’elisir d’amore, and Lucia di Lammermoor. But in the 1840s, he contracted neurosyphilis — then an incurable disease — which progressively affected his behavior and cognitive abilities. In 1846, he was hospitalized near Paris, but the following year, his friends brought him back to Bergamo, where he died on April 8, 1848.

His bond with Bergamo is still visible today.
In the Lower Town stands the Donizetti Theater: originally built as the Teatro Riccardi in 1791, rebuilt after a fire in 1797, and renamed after the composer in 1897, it is the stage that brings his music to life every autumn during the Donizetti Opera Festival.
In the garden of Piazza Cavour, next to the theater, stands the 19th-century monument known as the “musician listening to the Muse,” dedicated to him.

In the Upper Town, in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, you can find the funerary monument sculpted by Vincenzo Vela, which holds his remains, next to the tomb of his teacher Mayr.
If you wish to follow in his footsteps, you can do so by visiting the places connected to his life: his Birthplace at Via Borgo Canale 14, open to the public at specific times; the Donizetti Museum displaying portraits, autograph manuscripts, and instruments; the Donizetti Theater, accessible during performances, events, or scheduled guided tours; and the nearby monument in Piazza Cavour.
In the Upper Town, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore — where the composer was buried — can be visited during opening hours, while Palazzo Scotti, where he died, can only be seen from the outside, as it is a private building.

An interesting fact: when Donizetti’s remains were transferred to the Basilica in 1875, his skullcap was missing because it had been removed during the autopsy. It was finally reunited with his remains only in 1951 — almost eighty years later.