Preparing for Performance: a remnant of Donizetti’s process

In a letter to librettist Jacopo Ferretti, composer Gaetano Donizetti wrote, “success consists of doing little and making that little beautiful, and of not singing a lot and boring the audience.” Perhaps this was the compositional philosophy that allowed Donizetti to compose at such a rapid pace throughout his career (by age 41, he had composed 56 operas). Evidently, Donizetti failed to follow his own advice in what would be his final completed opera, Dom Sébastien, roi de Portugal. Premiered in 1843 at the Salle Le Peletier for the Opéra, Dom Sébastien received mixed reviews, with most critics complaining about the opera’s unnecessary length. Despite its tepid reception in Paris, the opera had a longer life in German translation with its Vienna production in 1845. But by the end of the decade, the opera was rarely performed anywhere.

Donizetti’s Dom Sébastien was adapted from the 1838 play Don Sébastien de Portugal written by Paul Foucher. The plot follows the sixteenth-century Portuguese king as he is brutally defeated in battle by Moroccan forces and defends his throne from Spain. Sébastien’s life is saved multiple times by Zayda, a Moroccan princess who, due to her love for the king, is eventually jailed with Sébastien for treason. The pair die together as they try to escape Spanish persecution.

Foucher’s play was such a success that the Opéra director, Léon Pillet, engaged the famed Eugène Scribe to create a libretto for an operatic adaptation. Both Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer were both sent sketches of the libretto as Pillet was seemingly courting both composers to write a new grand opera for the house. Ultimately, Donizetti signed the contract and wrote most of the opera in the spring and summer of 1843. Scholars suggest that part of the reason that the opera did not have more longevity was due to its musical and narrative darkness. Musicologist Mary Ann Smart, however, argues this darkness is perhaps better understood as a harbinger of Wagnerian and Verdian operatic heft that would later take European theaters by storm in the second half of the nineteenth century.

An example of Dom Sébastien’s “darkness” can be heard in the Act IV finale. After Zayda (originally sung by mezzo-soprano Rosine Stolz) professes her love for Sébastien (originally sung by tenor Gilbert Duprez), the penultimate Act closes with the pair’s capture. A chorus of Spanish Inquisitors shout out in a bold C minor, “Que le bûcher s'élève / que leur destin s'achève / par la flamme ou le glaive / punissons les tous deux” (“Let the pyre rise / let their destiny end / by flame or sword / let us punish them both”). The vocal writing is bombastic with tenors and basses singing a descending scale of accented whole notes before Dom Sébastien enters in A-flat major for a more contrapuntally complex (and typical) operatic finale.

The Stanford Libraries’ Memorial Library of Music collection has a two-page manuscript score outlining a portion of this Act IV finale. An inscription at the top left of the score reads “donné par Donizetti à M. Octave de l’académie R[oya]le de Musique” (“Given by Donizetti to Mr. Octave of the Royal Academy of Music”). Mr. Octave refers to tenor Jean-Baptiste Octave who originated the role of Dom Antonio, Sébastien’s uncle to whom he cedes the throne in Act I before traveling to Morocco. Antonio, however, sides with the Spanish Inquisitors and betrays his nephew.

We see Donizetti’s typical way of composing in this manuscript. As Gabriele Dotto and Roger Parker write, “Donizetti’s autograph scores were often written at great haste” and often starting with the vocal lines and simple bass accompaniment. He would later layer in full harmonization, vocal parts, and orchestration. Here, we get the first layer of Donizetti’s process with a vocal and bass outline. From the repeated text and musical materials (drones, repeated rhythmic gestures) and the inscription to Octave, we can safely guess that this was a contrapuntal part for Dom Antonio in the Act’s finale.

What appears in this manuscript, however, is not found in either the critical edition or other manuscript copies of the score. In fact, Dom Antonio does not appear to have an independent vocal line in the finale of Act IV at all. This suggests that the manuscript part in question was an early version that Donizetti provided to Octave for rehearsals of the opera. Likely, Octave’s part was eventually cut from later versions of the score upon which the critical editions were made. Additionally, the text used on the manuscript suggests a draft; Donizetti sets the words “qu’ils soient punnis tout deux” and later the page switches to “punnisser les tous deux.” Scribe was still modifying — to Donizetti’s great frustration — during the rehearsal period. As William Ashbrook writes that “Donizetti found the official librettist of the Opéra [Scribe] difficult to approach and high-handed” (p. 184) Scribe did not use a co-librettist and therefore, Donizetti had to “deal with Scribe alone.” Letters between Donizetti and his agent Michel Accursi show that Donizetti often complained about the collaboration and used Accursi as a sort of middleman (Critical Edition, XLVI). (For the record, the Act IV line in the most complete version of the libretto reads, “punissons les tous deux.”)

Just days before the premiere of the opera, Donizetti wrote out his predictions on how each act of the opera would be received by his friend Leo Herz. About Act IV, he anticipated that it would “not displease, but will not excite enthusiasm” (Ashbrook, 187). Perhaps this is the best way to sum up the opera’s Paris reception. While he had hoped it would be considered among his best works, in the press, Donizetti suffered from comparisons to his previous operas, which critics considered more pleasing. A victim of its composer’s own contemporary fame, Dom Sébastien remains a lesser-known opera in today’s repertoire.

To explore

• Ashbrook, William. Donizetti and His Operas. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
• Donizetti, Gaetano, and Mary Ann Smart (editor). Dom Sébastien, roi de Portugal: opéra en cinq actes. Milano: Ricordi, 2003.
• Donizetti, Gaetano. Dom Sébastien, roi de Portugal. Performed by Vesselina Kasarova, mezzo-soprano; Giuseppe Filianoti, tenor; Alastair Miles, bass; Simon Keenlyside, baritone; Carmelo Corrado Caruso, baritone; with supporting soloists, the Royal Opera Chorus, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House; Mark Elder, conductor. Recorded live at Covent Garden, London on September 11, 2005. Opera Rara. CD.

Guest blogger Michael Kinney is a postdoctoral fellow with the Stanford Center on Longevity. His research engages the politics and ethics of listening by asking how sociocultural narratives about the human life course shape sound and musical practices, communities, institutions, histories, and aesthetics. He received his PhD in musicology from Stanford in 2023.