Le duc d'Albe (Il duca d'Alba or The Duke of Alba) is an opera composed by Gaetano Donizetti in 1839 to a libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier. It did not receive its first performance until 1882, more than 40 years after Donizetti's death.
The opera had been originally commissioned for the Paris Opéra in 1839, and Donizetti worked on it throughout most of that year. However, he abandoned the project with only the first two acts comple...
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Le duc d'Albe (Il duca d'Alba or The Duke of Alba) is an opera composed by Gaetano Donizetti in 1839 to a libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier. It did not receive its first performance until 1882, more than 40 years after Donizetti's death.
The opera had been originally commissioned for the Paris Opéra in 1839, and Donizetti worked on it throughout most of that year. However, he abandoned the project with only the first two acts completed, plus notes for the melodies and bass lines for Acts 3 and 4. . The opera remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1848. In 1855, Scribe and Duveyrier's libretto was transferred to Verdi's opera Les vêpres siciliennes, with the setting changed from the Spanish occupation of Flanders in 1573 to the French occupation of Sicily in 1282.
In 1881 Matteo Salvi, a former pupil of Donizetti's, completed the opera from Donizetti's notes with the help of several other composers, including Amilcare Ponchielli. Angelo Zanardini translated...
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