Announcing Gaetano Donizetti’s Larghetto “Una furtiva lagrima” for Piano Solo

What follows is an extract from M° Fabrizio Capitanio’s notes at the beginning of this edition. Find the full edition here and watch the promo video here.

NOTE EDITORIALI

“Larghetto” [Una furtiva lagrima]

Coming back to the composition of the playful melodrama Elisir d’amore, everything was proceeding quickly and fully in agreement between the Poet and the Master [the composer], until the eighth scene of the second act; but here Donizetti wanted to introduce a romanza for tenor, to take advantage of a chamber music piece, which he kept in his wallet, with which he was in love. Donizetti had strange passions; sometimes he hated his music, and sometimes he adored it. Romani, at first, refused, saying: «Believe me, a romance in that place cools the situation down! What does that villainous simpleton have to do with it, who comes there to give a pathetic whining, when everything has to be festivity and cheerfulness?» Nevertheless, Donizetti insisted so much until he had the verse: “A stealthy tear in his eyes popped up…”¹

With these words Emilia Branca, wife of the great librettist Felice Romani, recounts about the insertion of one of the most famous melodies of Gaetano Donizetti—indeed, given his notoriety, it could be defined as his… creative business card!—in the opera L’elisir d’amore, one of the undisputed Donizettian masterpieces in the comic genre.

We should, however, pay attention to the following words: “a romance for tenor […] that he kept in his wallet, with which he was in love”. Judging from his writings, Donizetti always jealously kept the melody of this future romance—of which he was so fond—with himself: a sheet of music that must therefore have been folded several times, given the small size of a wallet.

As already well outlined by Paolo Fabbri,² the autograph manuscript today on display in a display cabinet at the Museo Donizettiano in Bergamo could have all the characteristics to be the aforementioned manuscript, given by the composer to Felice Romani during the drafting of the opera in the first months of 1832!

In fact, if observed closely, one can immediately notice the existence of various revealing lines of an ancient fold… or rather, it could be noticed, as the restoration and cleaning to which the autograph was subjected in 2015 made it a little more difficult to detect them. That’s not too bad, though: browsing the Internet Culturale³ portal where the Italian Digital Library is located, on which the autograph has been available for over twenty years, these bends are quite evident⁴.

All these elements would also give credit to the tale provided to us by Emilia Branca who, despite being governed by a somewhat rhetorical-celebrative narrative taste, especially towards her husband Felice Romani, concludes:

But [Donizetti] later realised, by the tacit judgement of the audience, that, despite the beauty of the music, the Poet was right also this time. The second act of the Opera was not as applauded as the first, because it appeared less spirited and, as the critics said, kind of weak.⁵

Less spirited? Kind of weak? Today we know of how the immense fortune enjoyed by this masterpiece gave the composer total reason, precisely because of the inclusion of the pathetic elements, extremely innovative for a comic work of the time.

The autograph manuscript of this piano piece, now preserved at the Museo Donizettiano in Bergamo⁶, was once part of the Donizettian collection of the Angelo Mai Civic Library⁷. Composed of an oblong format paper of 313 × 230 mm size, it consists of a single sheet, unsigned, with sixteen pentagrams and with notation present on a single side. It does not bear any title, but one can clearly read the tempo marking “Larghetto” written in full at the beginning of the first system.

The composition was initially set by Donizetti for tenor voice with piano accompaniment—probably his first intention. In reality, the line intended for the voice has been left devoid of notation; so much so that, in the second system—on the eighth bar—, the line intended for the voice just disappears, leaving only the piano grand staff. It is therefore a first complete sketch, even if only pianistic, of the splendid melody that, embellished by the verses of Romani, would be shaped into a romanza for tenor for Nemorino and placed at the end of the second act of L’elisir d’amore (1832).

The back of the sheet shows the following brief statement of authenticity and provenance that, more or less voluntarily, turns out to be steeped in a good dose of… nineteenth-century gossip:

Donizettian autograph manuscript, already owned by the master’s last servant, and given by Mr. Eng. Giuseppe Rota from Almenno S. Bartolomeo. — The maid was from d’Almenno and grossly called “la Donizetta”.

Prof. Achille Mazzoleni

Bergamo, 5 Nov. 1909.

In truth, it is necessary to make an important correction to Achille Mazzoleni’s statement, a writer, and Dante scholar from Bergamo (1863–1934): the person mentioned here was certainly not the “last housemaid” of Gaetano Donizetti, but of his brother Francesco (1792–1848). The woman, named Elisabetta Santi Pesenti, had taken care of him in the last period of his life and, in his testament, Francesco had named her his universal heir. As you can imagine, this unleashed a long series of backbiting in the city on her account, especially since the lady had proclaimed herself as his legitimate consort… and as can be argued from this note, this was a rumour that overflew even to the beginning of the following century!

Fabrizio Capitanio, 2024

1. EMILIA BRANCA, Felice Romani e i più riputati maestri di musica del suo tempo. Cenni biografici ed aneddotici, Torino-Firenze-Roma, Ermanno Loescher, 1882, p. 225 ↩
2. PAOLO FABBRI, Donizetti ritratto in piedi. Il Museo Donizettiano a Bergamo. Bergamo, Sestante Edizioni, 2016, pp. XVIII-XX. ↩
3. Internet Culturale – Cataloghi e collezioni digitali delle biblioteche italiane: https://www.internetculturale.it ↩
4. This is also accessible in OPAC-SBN at the following URL: http://id.sbn.it/bid/LO11064163. ↩
5. Emilia Branca, Felice Romani e i più riputati… cit., p. 226. ↩
6. Shelfmark: MUSMU.MS.52 (previous location: I 1º C d 12). ↩
7. Old Shelfmark: Gabinetto Λ 2 26 (17/9); registro di entrata: 1909, n° 365. ↩