Roberto Devereux is a tragedia lirica, or tragic opera, by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto after François Ancelot's tragedy Elisabeth d'Angleterre (1829), and based as well on the Historie secrète des amours d'Elisabeth et du comte d'Essex (1787) by Jacques Lescène des Maisons. Devereux was the subject of at least two other French plays, both titled Le Comte d'Essex: one by Thomas Corneille and one by Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède.
Giuseppina Ronzi de Begnis, the first singer of the part of Elisabetta, painting by Karl Briullov
Paul Barroilhet: The Duke of Nottingham
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer, best known for his almost 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, the comedy Il Pigmalione, which may never have been performed during his lifetime.
Donizetti as a schoolboy in Bergamo
Johann Simone Mayr, c. 1810
Donizetti as a schoolboy
The young Donizetti