Gaetano Donizetti -- Moment und Prozess: Studien zur musikalischen Dramaturgie

Abstract

Musicians and scholars have felt justified in talking of a ‘Donizetti renaissance’ at least since the centenary of the composer’s death in 1948: many of his operas have been brought to renewed public attention on stage, on record, and in print; a critical edition was begun and several conferences and specialist publications have fostered academic engagement with the composer. Ellen Taller’s monograph is among the latest scholarly products of this ‘renaissance’. A more or less ‘as is’ publication of her 2001 doctoral dissertation, submitted at the University of Zurich, it intends to trace Donizetti’s ‘aesthetic aims’ (pp. 11, 16) by ‘analysing as many opere serie as possible’ from across the composer’s career (p. 15; the disclaimer ‘as possible’ refers to the inaccessibility of some sources). For Taller, both ‘artistic intentions’ and ‘analyses’ pertain almost exclusively to the level of musical form: at the centre of her study is Donizetti’s confrontation of the formal norms of primo Ottocento opera. Taller posits that this confrontation occurred primarily in serious rather than in comic opera (her inclusion of several opere semiserie is unexplained), but that the composer could not always implement his dramaturgical ideas on stage. This was owing to the strict reign of established musical forms ‘as well as . . . the conventions of everyday operatic life: the demands of performers, the expectations of the audience and the power of the impresario’ (p. 13). Hence Donizetti constantly had to negotiate his own conceptions and the inherited musical principles. The resulting experiments are evident not only in the unevenness of many operas—particularly his lesser-known ones—but also in Donizetti’s ample revisions, undertaken partly during the course of a composition and partly after its completion or first run of performances.