The day beautiful music was born in Bergamo

A portrait housed at
 the Donizetti Museum

Composer Gaetano Donizetti was born 213 years ago today in Via Borgo Canale, a few metres outside the walls of Bergamo’s Città Alta (upper town).
A prolific composer of operas in the early part of the 19th century, Donizetti was a major influence on Verdi, Puccini and other Italian composers who came after him.
Visitors to Bergamo can see the place where Donizetti was born on 29 November 1797, marked by a plaque at number 14 in the middle of a row of characteristic tall houses.
Leave the Città Alta through Porta Sant’Alessandro and go past the station for the San Vigilio funicolare. You will find Via Borgo Canale is the next street on the right.
Donizetti was the fifth of six children born to a textile worker and his wife. He once wrote about his birthplace: “…I was born underground in Borgo Canale. One descended the stairs to the basement, where no ray of sunlight had ever been seen. And like an owl I flew forth…”
The house is open to the public at weekends only. Check the opening times with the Tourist Information Office in Via Gombito.
Donizetti developed a love for music and despite the poverty of his family benefited from early tuition in Bergamo. He went on to compose some of the greatest lyrical operas of all time such as Lucia di Lammermoor and L’Elisir d’Amore.
After a magnificent career Donizetti returned to Bergamo and died in 1843 in the Palazzo Scotti, where he was living as a guest, in the street now named Via Donizetti in the Città Alta.

Via Borgo Canale

There is a museum dedicated to his life and career in the Città Alta, housed in the former Palazzo Misericordia Maggiore in Via Arena.
Donizetti’s tomb is in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Piazza Duomo in the Città Alta.
A monument dedicated to him was erected in Bergamo in 1897 - 100 years after his birth - near Teatro Donizetti in Via Sentierone in the Città Bassa (lower town).

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