Sigma Alpha Iota

sai-national.org • Winter 2026 21 I visited the Ponchielli memorial monument in the John Paul II Gardens. In Bergamo, Italy, I marveled at the magnificent cathedral where Ponchielli served as Chapel Master beginning in 1881. Gaetano Donizetti is the most famous son of this city. In 1806, he was admitted to its free, public choir school, an initiative funded by the renowned German-born, Italian composer Giovanni Simone Mayr (1763–1846), Chapel Master at Santa Maria Maggiore. Donizetti excelled in theory and piano and began dabbling in composition. Although he didn't have a successful career as a choirboy, he was permitted to remain at this school for nearly a decade before studying composition at the Philharmonic Lyceum in Bologna. He returned to Bergamo and upon Mayr's recommendation, received three opera commissions in Venice. From the cathedral, it is only a short walk to the Donizetti Museum, which is open Thursday through Sunday. Passing through a Renaissance courtyard, I climbed upstairs to the entrance and was greeted by two wall posters (one from 1997 in honor of the composer's 100th birthday) framing a miniature replica statue of Donizetti and Melpomene by Francesco Jerace. The original 1897 marble monument is located in a garden next to Teatro Donizetti. The composer's humble birth house is open to the public. The great cellist Alfredo Piatti (1822–1901), a fan of Donizetti, was born nearby. While his operatic music played in the background, I purchased a ticket (along with some Donizetti stickers) and entered a large room with Donizetti portraits. There were long glass-top display cases with music manuscripts, documents, and memorabilia (including his traveling case and quills); his pianos; and listening stations. At one, his private life and details of his compositional process are highlighted. Fortunately, exhibition plaques, display labels, and recordings are available in English. A small adjoining room contained the Austrian court clothes he wore in 1842 as Kapellmeister in Vienna, and also his bed and invalid's armchair from the room in which he spent his final months under the care of his nephew Andrea. Although Donizetti wrote operas—many of them comic—his personal life bore more than its share of tragedy. None of his three children survived and within a year, he lost his parents and his wife of nine years, Virgilia Vasselli. The tombs of Donizetti and Mayr, his beloved advocate, are in the nearby Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. He achieved great success in Naples, Rome, Palermo, Vienna, and Paris. Donizetti wrote approximately seventy operas (though not all performed in his lifetime). The most famous works remain Anna Bolena (1830), L'elisir d'amore (1832), Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and Don Pasquale (1843). He was a prolific composer of music in other genres: solo piano works, chamber music (including nineteen string quartets), sixteen symphonies, almost two hundred songs, about forty-five duets, three oratorios, and nearly a dozen concertos for various instruments. According to music historians, the bel canto tradition pioneered by Donizetti and Ponchielli culminated in the works of Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). Not coincidentally, he was one of Ponchielli's pupils! Jayne I. Hanlin is an initiate of Alpha Omicron and current member of the St. Louis Alumnae chapter. Mrs. Hanlin, the sister of famed pianist Malcolm Frager, is the co- author of Learning Latin Through Mythology (Cambridge University Press, 1991). At left, Donizetti's bedroom of his final months. At left, Donizetti's bedroom of his final months. Below at left, Hanlin with a sculpture Below at left, Hanlin with a sculpture reproduction of Donizetti. reproduction of Donizetti. Below right, an outdoor sculpture of Ponchielli. Below right, an outdoor sculpture of Ponchielli. A Wld of Music

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