Il borgomastro di Saardam
Music by Gaetano Donizetti · libretto by Domenico Gilardoni · premiered 1827 · at Teatro Mercadante
Il borgomastro di Saardam (The mayor of Saardam) is an 1827 melodramma giocoso (opera buffa) in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The libretto, by Domenico Gilardoni, was based on the 1818 play Le bourgmestre de Sardam, ou Les deux Pierres by Mélesville, Jean-Toussaint Merle and Eugène Cantiran de Boirie. Albert Lortzing's 1837 opera Zar und Zimmermann is ultimately based, via a German translation, on the same French play. The plot concerns a famous episode in the life of Peter the Great, in which he disguised himself under an assumed name as a worker in the shipyards of Saardam, and has certain similarities to Donizetti's earlier 1-act farce Il falegname di Livonia.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Il borgomastro di Saardam", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer, best known for his over 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was a leading composer of the bel canto opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century and a probable influence on other composers such as Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in Bergamo in Lombardy. At an early age he was taken up by Simon Mayr who enrolled him with a full scholarship in a school which he had set up. There he received detailed musical training. Mayr was instrumental in obtaining a place for Donizetti at the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera,…
Text from the Wikipedia article "Gaetano Donizetti", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Other Operas by Gaetano Donizetti
- Alina, regina di Golconda (1766)
- Betly (1779)
- Il diluvio universale (1788)
- Il Pigmalione (1790)
- Alahor in Granata (1793)
- Don Pasquale (1810)
- Alfredo il grande (1818)
- Enrico di Borgogna (1818)