Donizetti and the music of mental derangement: Anna Bolena, Lucia di Lammermoor, and the composer's neurobiological illness

Author(s): Peschel, R.

Journal/Book: Yale J Biol Med. 1992; 65: 189-200.

Abstract: The composer Gaetano Donizetti, who died in a state of mental derangement due to neurosyphilis, created some of opera's greatest scenes of psychosis. His letters reveal the clinical progression of his neurobiological illness, which was confirmed by autopsy. One can hypothesize that the composer's brain disease, which led to his psychosis and death, may have had an influence on his ability to create the powerful and unforgettable scenes of psychosis in his operas. In Anna Bolena, he captured in musical and dramatic terms Anne Boleyn's historically corroborated mental disorder during her imprisonment in the Tower of London. Sixteen years after having composed Anna Bolena, Donizetti himself would be locked up, against his will, in a mental institution. In Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti portrayed a girl given to hallucinations who, in her unforgettable "mad" scene, comes on stage, a pathetic embodiment of a human being in the throes of psychosis. Thirteen years after Lucia's premiere, Donizetti would die, psychotic and paralyzed, of untreated neurosyphilis. Studying Donizetti's neurosyphilis and the portrayals of psychosis in his operas can help one to appreciate the pain of human beings trapped in the prison of a brain subjected to the devastation of mental derangement.

Keyword(s): Famous Persons; History of Medicine, 19th Cent.; Neurosyphilis ; Organic Mental Disorders, Psychotic Mental Disorders metabolism; Music history

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