Domenico Donzelli was an Italian tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

 with a robust voice who enjoyed an important career in Paris, London and his native country during the 1808-1841 period.

Biography

Donzelli can be regarded as an offshoot of the so-called Bergamo tenor school which had originated with Giacomo David

Giacomo David

Giacomo David , was a leading Italian tenor of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Biography:...

 and Gaetano Crivelli

Gaetano Crivelli

Gaetano Crivelli was a famous Italian tenor.Although he was born not actually in Bergamo but in neighbouring Brescia, Crivelli can be regarded as one of the founders of that remarkable Bergamo tenor school which, beginning with Giacomo David and proceeding through such singers as Giovanni David,...

, and which also included Giovanni David

Giovanni David

Giovanni David was an Italian tenor particularly known for his roles in Rossini operas....

, Andrea Nozzari

Andrea Nozzari

Andrea Nozzari was an Italian tenor.Nozzari was born in Vertova and studied in Bergamo and Rome. He is notable for the principal roles written for him by Gioachino Rossini and mostly premiered in Domenico Barbaia's theatres in Naples...

, Marco Bordogni

Marco Bordogni

Giulio Marco Bordogni , usually called Marco Bordogni, was an Italian operatic tenor and singing teacher of great popularity and success, whose mature career was based in Paris.-Biography:...

, and Giovanni Battista Rubini

Giovanni Battista Rubini

Giovanni Battista Rubini was an Italian tenor, as famous in his time as Enrico Caruso in a later day. His ringing and expressive coloratura dexterity in the highest register of his voice, the tenorino, inspired the writing of operatic roles which today are almost impossible to cast...

.

Donzelli made his debut in his home town, in 1808, as a second tenor in an opera by Johann Simon Mayr. He soon moved to Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

 and performed many roles there, including that of Cinna in a revival of Gaspare Spontini

Gaspare Spontini

Gaspare Luigi Pacifico Spontini was an Italian opera composer and conductor, extremely celebrated in his time, though largely forgotten after his death.-Biography:...

's La Vestale

La vestale

La vestale is an opera composed by Gaspare Spontini to a French libretto by Etienne de Jouy. It was first performed at the Paris Opéra in Paris on December 15, 1807 and is regarded as Spontini's masterpiece...

. He became well-known in 1815 when Rossini wrote for him the role of Torvaldo in Torvaldo e Dorliska

Torvaldo e Dorliska

Torvaldo e Dorliska is an operatic dramma semiserio in two act by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini, based on Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by the revolutionary Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai, whose work was the source of the Lodoïska libretto set by Luigi Cherubini...

, and when, the following year, he made his first appearance at the Teatro alla Scala as the protagonist of Ferdinando Paër

Ferdinando Paer

-Biography:Paer was born at Parma. His father was a trumpeter with the Ducal Bodyguards and also performed at church and court events. His name, Ferdinando, was after Duke Ferdinand of Parma and was given to him by Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, Duke Ferdinand's wife...

's Achille.

His career made subsequent headway in major Italian theatres, in Paris, and in London, gaining fame for many of his Rossini roles, especially Otello

Otello (Rossini)

Otello is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsi, based on Shakespeare's play Othello....

. His performances ranged from the protagonist of Pacini

Giovanni Pacini

Giovanni Pacini was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. Pacini was born in Catania, Sicily, the son of the buffo Luigi Pacini, who was to appear in the premieres of many of Giovanni's operas...

's Cesare in Egitto (1821), to the role of Cavalier Belfiore in Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims

Il viaggio a Reims

Il viaggio a Reims, ossia L'albergo del giglio d'oro is an operatic dramma giocoso, originally performed in three acts, by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Balocchi, based in part on Corinne, ou L'Italie by Mme de Staël.Rossini's last opera in the Italian language Il viaggio a...

(1825), from the first Pollione in Bellini

Vincenzo Bellini

Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...

's Norma

Norma (opera)

Norma is a tragedia lirica or opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini with libretto by Felice Romani after Norma, ossia L'infanticidio by Alexandre Soumet. First produced at La Scala on December 26, 1831, it is generally regarded as an example of the supreme height of the bel canto tradition...

(1831) to the chief part in Mercadante

Saverio Mercadante

Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as impressive a number of works as either; and his development of...

's Il bravo (1839). He appeared also in several premières of Donizetti operas, for instance, as Almazio in Zoraide di Granata (1822), Ugo, conte di Parigi

Ugo, conte di Parigi

Ugo, conte di Parigi is a tragedia lirica, or tragic opera, in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after Hippolyte-Louis-Florent Bis's Blanche d'Aquitaine...

in the opera of that name (1832), and Don Ruiz in Maria Padilla

Maria Padilla

Maria Padilla is a melodramma, or opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Gaetano Rossi and the composer wrote the Italian libretto after François Ancelot's play. It premiered on December 26, 1841 at La Scala, Milan...

(1841).

Donzelli retired from the stage in 1841. He returned briefly in 1844/45 to sing in Naples, but his voice had irreparably deteriorated. He died in Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

 in 1873, at the age of 83.

Artistic features

In Donzelli's artistic career, it is possible to discern three separate periods. In the first he was mainly a comic opera tenorino; the second, more substantial period (enduring until about 1822), was spent as a singer of the Rossini stamp; the third, and most significant, was spent as a "tenore di forza

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

" (a category of dramatic tenor). Donzelli was in fact an old-fashioned baritone-type tenor in the traditional Italian manner, with a fairly narrow vocal range. In the central period of his career he could sing up to high C, but only in "falsettone

Falsettone

Falsettone is a term used in modern Italian musicology to describe a vocal technique used by male opera singers in the past, in which the fluty sounds typical of falsetto singing are amplified by using the same singing technique as is used in the modal voice register...

", a sort of head voice, but much more forceful and expressive than the proper falsetto

Falsetto

Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...

).

Little versed in coloratura

Coloratura

Coloratura has several meanings. The word is originally from Italian, literally meaning "coloring", and derives from the Latin word colorare . When used in English, the term specifically refers to elaborate melody, particularly in vocal music and especially in operatic singing of the 18th and...

, but decidedly powerful of voice, he had a dark timbre, a firm accent, great phrasing and passionate acting. Despite criticisms of his voice's strenuousness and lack of agility, Donzelli can be held to represent the junction between the old neoclassic style of baritone-type tenor and the romantic "forceful tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

". He become the model for the real founder of the latter category of singers, Gilbert Louis Duprez, who was to become famous as the first practitioner of the high C from the chest.

Stories are told that an attempt to emulate Donzelli's robust singing style might have been the cause of the demise of a young colleague of his, Americo Sbigoli

Americo Sbigoli

Americo Sbigoli was an Italian tenor.He is best known for the unusual manner of his death, as documented by the composer Giovanni Pacini. Singing the second tenor part in a performance of Pacini's opera Cesare in Egitto, Sbigoli took part in a vocal quintet with first tenor Domenico Donzelli...

, who had been engaged, together with Donzelli, in 1821, to execute the première of Donizetti's Zoraide di Granata at Rome's Teatro Argentina

Teatro Argentina

The Teatro Argentina is an opera house and theatre located in the Largo di Torre Argentina, a square in Rome, Italy. It is one of the oldest theatres in Rome, and was inaugurated on January 31, 1732 with Berenice by Domenico Sarro....

. In trying to match Donzelli's performance during rehearsals, Sbigoli reputedly burst a blood vessel in his throat and thereupon died.

Sources

• Appolonia, Giorgio, Le voci di Rossini, EDA, Torino 1992, pp. 225-241
• Caruselli, Salvatore (ed.), Grande enciclopedia della musica lirica, Longanesi &C. Periodici S.p.A., Roma, ad nomen
• Warrack, John and West, Ewan (1992), The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 782 pages, ISBN 0-19-869164-5
• This article is a substantial translation from Domenico Donzelli in the Italian Wikipedia.