"Don Pasquale," Dramma buffo in tre atti di Giovanni Ruffini (review)

Gaetano Donizetti: "Don Pasquale," Dramma buffo in tre atti di Giovanni Ruffini (Facsimile of the autograph, Milan, Archivio storico Ricordi [M. I. 13], with introduction by Philip Gossett) Milan: Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, 1999 434 pages (plus Introduzione all'edizione in facsimile, 149 pages), 2 volumes

This is a special facsimile of the autograph manuscript of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, an edition planned to coincide with the bicentennial of the composer's birth (1997) and the sesquicentennial of his death (1998). That it did not appear until these celebratory events had come and gone is no wonder, considering the complicated sum of its parts: it consists of a replica of the manuscript in the Casa Ricordi archive, duplicating its well-worn nineteenth-century brown-marble board binding; an accompanying soft-cover volume in modern typeset constituting Philip Gossett's substantial introductory essay; and an elegant dark-green storage case for both volumes. Its limited printing (500 copies) pretty much restricts its availability to specialists and those who have access to institutional libraries that can afford to stock it on their (undoubtedly closed) shelves. Nevertheless, the serious opera buff who can penetrate these barriers will no doubt find it a rich source of information. Do not let the Italian bibliographic data deter you: Gossett's lucid and highly informative introductory essay is printed in his original English as well as in Annalisa Bini's Italian translation.

The introductory material casts light on the final phase of Donizetti's compositional career, besides providing a fascinating, almost day-to-day, account of the creation of Don Pasquale. The historical narrative is made all the more vivid by the many direct citations from the correspondence of Donizetti, his librettist Giovanni Ruffini, and others. It concludes with a meticulously detailed description of the physical manuscript, explaining pagination, markings and labeling in various hands, paper types, and so forth.

In between, virtually all the important aspects of the opera's genesis and premiere are addressed by Gossett, including the composer's negotiations with the Paris Théâtre-Italien (where the opera buffa was first performed in 1843), the extensive revisions Donizetti required Ruffini to make in Anelli's Ser Marcantonio (on which Pasquale was based), and why Ruffini ultimately refused to let his name be attached to the libretto or the score (thus giving rise to its famous ambiguity of authorship). ¹ In the lengthy discussion of the composition of the opera, many an interesting detail is reconsidered in the light of existing primary source materials. To give but one example: Gossett explains the known similarity between the melody of Pasquale's act 1 "Un fuoco insolito" and the tenor cabaletta "Tutti qui spero" from Donizetti's own Gianni di Parigi as not so much a case of self-borrowing as an inadvertent echo, which (as letters reveal) the composer then took special pains to eradicate by modifying the score of the earlier opera when it was purchased and published by Ricordi soon after the successful first performances of Don Pasquale.

Such editorial care belies the popular image of a Donizetti tossing off comic operas in the time it takes for the average person to sneeze. Indeed, the facsimile score of Pasquale itself amply serves "to demonstrate," as Gossett states in his introduction (p. 83), "that the superb dramma buffo that has held the stage since 1843 and continues to delight audiences today was also the product of intensive compositional labor, some of it extending over months." To give just a few illustrations: (1) The ritornello introducing Norina's opening cavatina contains five additional bars, fully orchestrated, that were crossed out in red crayon by Donizetti, presumably during rehearsals or perhaps even after the first performance; the passage is still legible and, in Gossett's opinion, "attractive," so perhaps some enterprising conductor will be motivated to try out this music in a modern performance. (2) In the...