Tag: Gaetano Donizetti
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Lucrezia Borgia—victim of her times
George Dunea The only confirmed Lucrezia portrait painted from life. Attributed to Dosso Dossi, c. 1519, National Gallery of Victoria. Via Wikimedia. For five hundred years, society has unfairly blackened the name of Lucrezia Borgia—in history, literature, even in opera. Living at a time when girls could be disposed of at their parents’ whim,…
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Madness at the opera
It is ironic and tragic that Gaetano Donizetti, author of the most famous mad scenes in the history of opera, should himself have died in a state of utter madness from what has been described “as the most terrible of all brain diseases.”1 In two of his operas, Anna Bolena and Lucia di Lammermoor, the…