Gaetano Donizetti's Self-Borrowings as an Artistic Practice

Gaetano Donizetti’s versatile production unfolded over three decades (1818–43) and was staged in the foremost Italian and European theatres. This article fills a gap in the musicological literature by presenting the first systematic study of the composer’s recourse to self-borrowing, questioning the idea that it must be read as a chiefly economic practice, that allowed the composer to save time, and offering novel keys to reading his re-use of existing materials. In the introductory section, I offer a preliminary discussion of the coeval discourse on Donizetti’s self-imitation as it surfaces in the press, which appears to follow in the footsteps of that on Rossini’s. I then look at his self-borrowings across genres, dwelling on the ways in which he re-functionalized earlier serious passages within comic frames, almost inevitably to achieve a parodic effect, whereas the level of parodization depends on the degree to which the earlier piece can be recognized. After discussing the links between parody and diegetic music – one of his favourite contexts for employing older materials – I turn to Donizetti’s serious production, advancing the hypothesis that his recourse to self-borrowing could take on semantic connotations. In so doing, in the second part of the article I focus on selected case studies grouped into three thematic areas, which – similarly to, and occasionally in connection with diegetic music – all involve the suspension of a character’s habitual idioms: deception, rituals and madness. The article includes, in particular, extended examples from Linda di Chamounix (Vienna, Kärntnertortheater, 1842), Sancia di Castiglia (Naples, Teatro San Carlo, 1832), Il paria (Naples, Teatro San Carlo, 1829), Marino Faliero (Paris, Théâtre-Italien, 1835), Enrico di Borgogna (Venice, Teatro San Luca, 1818), and Anna Bolena (Milan, Teatro Carcano, 1830), which call for a reassessment of the composer’s aesthetic conception of self-borrowings. My ultimate concern is to demonstrate that Donizetti’s use of self-borrowing within these boundaries could perform a dramatic function, deliberately connoting the altered modes of expression of the characters to which the earlier piece is associated. To conclude, I argue that Donizetti turned an economic practice into an artistic means of articulating his dramaturgy.