Poliuto - Composition History

Composition History

By January 1838, Donizetti was in negotiations with the Paris Opéra to compose two new works. While in Venice for the premiere of Maria de Rudenz he had met, and had been impressd with, Adolphe Nourrit, for more than a decade the principal tenor in Paris; but Nourrit’s popularity was now in decline, and he was in danger of being supplanted in the public's affections by rising star Gilbert Louis Duprez. Nourrit and Donizetti were in complete agreement that a grand opera in the style of Halévy's La Juive would exactly suit the tastes of a French audience and provide Nourrit with the ideal vehicle to restore his career.

But Donizetti's next opera was scheduled to be premiered in Naples, the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, whose King Ferdinand II was a devout Catholic who refused to allow any theatrical representation of religious scenes and forbade the production at the last minute. The management of the Teatro di San Carlo were forced to substitute Pia de' Tolomei, and Donizetti left immediately for Paris vowing never to have any further contact with Naples. The cancellation dealt a crushing blow to Nourrit's hopes of reviving his flagging career, and on 8 March 1839 he jumped to his death from a window of his apartment in Naples. On reaching Paris, Donizetti revised and expanded the opera to a French text which was eventually produced as Les Martyrs at the Salle Le Pelletier of the Paris Opera on 10 April 1840. Poliuto was not performed in its original Italian form until after Donizetti's death.

A fascinating musical sidelight is that the first four notes of a prominent D major celebratory/triumphal chorus (second D above middle C, followed by F#, B & A above middle C) toward the end of the opera (returning perhaps twice more for dramatic emphasis) are identical to the first four notes of the familiar second theme of the second movement of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony, in E minor, Op. 64 (1888) (Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza) in a different rhythm (6/8 rather than Donizetti's 4/4). First stated softly and plaintively in F-sharp major as an oboe solo in the opening "A" section of this structurally very orthodox ternary ABA movement, it returns loudly and passionately in the full orchestra in the movement's tonic key of D major near the end of the "A" recap, inimitably recalling the Donizetti D major chorus in question at that point, and then for the last time in the coda (after the orchestra bursts out for dramatic contrast with the cyclical "motto" theme, as it did similarly in the middle of the movement as a bridge between the "B" and the final "A" sections to modulate back to D major for the recap) softly in the descending strings, section by section, followed by the brief ascending-triad clarinet solo that ends the movement.