«Quello che ha scritto più di tutti per quel povero amico!» Gaetano Donizetti, le composizioni in morte di Vincenzo Bellini e un omaggio musicale dimenticato
Edoardo Cavalli
Abstract
Bellini’s death deeply affected Gaetano Donizetti, who expressed his grief in music on more than one occasion. Literature has always remembered three compositions: a Messa di Requiem, a Lamento per la morte di Vincenzo Bellini, and a Sinfonia on themes from Bellini’s operas. With the exception of the Requiem, these pieces have never really interested the critics, who have generally listed them among in memoriam compositions without delving deeper. The overall study of the sources, however, allows us to better contextualize Donizetti’s ‘bellinian’ production and even add a fourth composition to the list: a Hymn, regularly recorded in the Donizetti catalogues, which however has never been the object of a specific study, and has gone forgotten. The present study intends to revisit the context in which Donizetti composed his pieces on the death of Bellini: starting from the personal relationship between the two composers (from Donizetti’s perspective), moving on to the circumstances that suggested composing the Requiem, the Lamento and the Sinfonia. In the framework thus out¬lined, the Hymn also reclaims its place, whose fall into oblivion may not be due simply to chance.
Keywords
Gaetano Donizetti – music upon Bellini’s death – forgotten Hymn – Società Filarmonica Napolitana – Francesco Florimo
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