page_title: Gaetano Donizetti
section_title: Summer/Autumn 1844: Travel to and within Italy
hierarchical_section_title: Gaetano Donizetti / Career as an opera composer / 1843–1845: Paris to Vienna to Italy; final return to Paris / Summer/Autumn 1844: Travel to and within Italy
caption_attribution_description: English: Antonio Dolci-friend of Donizetti
context_page_description: Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer, best known for his almost 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, Donizetti was a leading composer of the bel canto opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century. Donizetti's close association with the bel canto style was undoubtedly an influence on other composers such as Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in Bergamo in Lombardy. Although he did not come from a musical background, at an early age he was taken under the wing of composer Simon Mayr who had enrolled him by means of a full scholarship in a school which he had set up. There he received detailed training in the arts of fugue and counterpoint. Mayr was also instrumental in obtaining a place for the young man at the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy Il Pigmalione, which may never have been performed during his lifetime.
  An offer in 1822 from Domenico Barbaja, the impresario of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, which followed the composer's ninth opera, led to his move to that city and his residency there which lasted until the production of Caterina Cornaro in January 1844.
context_section_description: Gaetano's brother Giuseppe, on leave from Constantinople, arrived in Vienna in early June. He had intended to leave by about 22nd, but Gaetano's bout of illness delayed his departure, and the brothers traveled together to Bergamo on about 12 or 13 July proceeding slowly but arriving around the 21st.
  William Ashbrook describes the second half of 1844 as a period of "pathetic restlessness". He continues: "Donizetti went to Bergamo, Lovere on Lake Iseo [about 26 miles from Bergamo], back to Bergamo, to Milan [31 July], to Genoa [with his friend Antonio Dolci, on 3 August, where they stayed until 10 August because of illness], to Naples [by steamer, from which he wrote to Vasselli in Rome explaining that the upcoming visit may be last time he would see his brother], [then] to Rome [on 14 September to see Vasselli], back to Naples [on 2 October after being invited back to Naples for the first San Carlo performances of Maria di Rohan on 11 November, which was immensely successful], to Genoa [on 14 November by boat; arrived on the 19th] and on to Milan again [for two days]" before reaching Bergamo on 23 November where his found his old friend Mayr to be very ill. He delayed his departure for as long as possible, but Mayr died on 2 December shortly after Donizetti had left Bergamo.
caption: Antonio Dolci, Bergamo friend of Donizetti
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