Donizetti, the “Gifted”
Composer of melodies so enchantingTo hear them once awakens emotionsYou didn’t know your body can endure,From hilarity to heaving tragedy,Softest melisma to mad staccato,He worked in illness inflicted by sex,The lick of syphilis, Everyman’s disease,The same sex his operas raptured about(And that may have killed his wife and children),Promiscuous disfigurement, a poxOn all our houses from flesh erected.
When Verdi saw him near the end he grieved.He understood exactly what was dying:The tri-aria of Italian opera—Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti—Maestri del bel canto ... the human voice,By answering challenges, beautiful, Asking flesh to be all that flesh can be:Carrier. Of affection or infection? We rarely know until it’s too lateWhen the truth wakes us from complacency:Both are indiscriminately legato.
This is serious business. Please listen.I have sung “Una furtiva lagrima,”And, amateur that I am, I can feelHis gift flowing through my body ecstatic.How came a man so endowed to contractA disease so virulent and disfiguring?Brothels may be the short answer — infected whores.But that’s a material cause, no more.What drove him to it? Lust, says the moralist.Sure. But that’s generic. What about this man?Gaetano Donizetti, the musician?
When Verdi saw him near the end he grieved.He understood exactly what was dying:The tri-aria of Italian opera—Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti—Maestri del bel canto ... the human voice,By answering challenges, beautiful, Asking flesh to be all that flesh can be:Carrier. Of affection or infection? We rarely know until it’s too lateWhen the truth wakes us from complacency:Both are indiscriminately legato.
This is serious business. Please listen.I have sung “Una furtiva lagrima,”And, amateur that I am, I can feelHis gift flowing through my body ecstatic.How came a man so endowed to contractA disease so virulent and disfiguring?Brothels may be the short answer — infected whores.But that’s a material cause, no more.What drove him to it? Lust, says the moralist.Sure. But that’s generic. What about this man?Gaetano Donizetti, the musician?
Extreme poverty in his youth? Possibly.Few such men handle success very well.It goes to his head, also to his prick,Skips a beat (the heart?), and too soon the coda.Late in his delirium, DonizettiWould solicit whores (two at a time, it’s said), And soon had to be under guard everywhereTo prevent his psychotic lechery.But earlier in his life his wife died,Their children, too ... victims of syphilis?He could never know. His fortune belies his name.
The sweetness of sex drives us crazy all,Craziest perhaps those who deny it.Species reproduce and that includes ours.There’s no room to judge, so we tell ourselves.We know how he lost his mind and body.What does that matter if we love his music?The question is naïve. We are sexcited.Nemorino and Adina are we allTrusting too much in elixirs of love,And, knowing what Donizetti paid for his,We should remember every gift comes with a price.
The sweetness of sex drives us crazy all,Craziest perhaps those who deny it.Species reproduce and that includes ours.There’s no room to judge, so we tell ourselves.We know how he lost his mind and body.What does that matter if we love his music?The question is naïve. We are sexcited.Nemorino and Adina are we allTrusting too much in elixirs of love,And, knowing what Donizetti paid for his,We should remember every gift comes with a price.
