na Comaro" the
sixty-third one represented, was brought out at Naples in the year 1844
without adding aught to his reputation. Of this composer's long list of
works only ten or eleven retain any hold on the stage, his best serious
operas being "La Favorita," "Linda," "Anna Bolena," "Lucrezia Borgia,"
and "Lucia;" the finest comic works, "L'Elisir d'Amore," "La Fille du
Regiment," and "Don Pasquale."

In composing Donizetti never used the pianoforte, writing with great
rapidity and never making corrections. Yet curious to say, he could
not do anything without a small ivory scraper by his side, though never
using it. It was given him by his father when commencing his career,
with the injunction that, as he was determined to become a musician, he
should make up his mind to write as little rubbish as possible, advice
which Donizetti sometimes forgot.

The first signs of the malady, which was the cause of the composer's
death, had already shown themselves in 1845. Fits of hallucination and
all the symptoms of approaching derangement displayed themselves with
increasing intensity. An incessant worker, overseer of his operas on
twenty stages, he had to pay the tax by which his fame became his ruin.
It is reported that he anticipated the coming scourge, for during the
rehearsals of "Don Sebastian" he said, "I think I shall go mad yet."
Still he would not put the bridle on his restless activity. At last
paralysis seized him, and in January, 1846, he was placed under the
care of the celebrated Dr. Blanche at Ivry. In the hope that the mild
influence of his native air might heal his distempered brain, he was
sent to Bergamo, in 1848, but died in his brother's arms April 8th.
The inhabitants of the Peninsula were then at war with Austria, and
the bells that sounded the knell of Donizetti's departure mingled their
solemn peals with the roar of the cannon fired to celebrate the victory
of Goito.

His faithful valet, Antoine, wrote to Adolphe Adam, describing his
obsequies: "More than four thousand persons," he relates, "were present
at the ceremony. The procession was composed of the numerous clergy of
Bergamo, the most illustrious members of the community and its environs,
and of the civic guard of the town and the suburbs. The discharge of
musketry, mingled with the light of three or four thousand torches,
presented a fine effect; the whole was enhanced by the presence of
three military bands and the most propitious weather it w