City in Lombardy, Italy c50 km north-east of Milan, below the first foothills of the Alps. Its principal church, S Maria Maggiore, built in the 12th century, was administered from 1449 by the Misericordia Maggiore, whose consorzio (council) had conducted its liturgy and given alms since 1265. The Misericordia introduced music into the service and began to keep records, a practice which continued into the late 19th century. The first records of payments to singers date from 1361. Instruction in singing and playing was instituted in 1449, with two teachers serving under the maestro di cappella; these courses were then connected to the Accademia di Lettere, thus establishing a school of music. The first organ, a positive, was installed by 1402, and by 1527 instrumentalists were regularly employed at the church. The post of maestro di cappella was held by Franchinus Gaffurius in 1483; his 16th-century successors included Gasparo Alberti, who was attached to the cappella in several capacities during the period 1514–60, Pietro Pontio (1565–7), Pietro Vinci (1568–80), Ippolito Chamaterò (1580–81) and Giovanni Cavaccio (1598–1626). Among the students of the cappella was the composer Antonio Scandello, cornettist in the years 1541–7. As in Venice (Bergamo belonged to the Venetian Republic from 1430), there was a choir supported by two organs, brass and viols, appropriate especially to Renaissance double-choir music such as Alberti’s.
During the 17th century the musical forces were reduced and performed simple, though no less festive, concertato music. From the 1620s, and notably after the plague of 1630, the use of string instruments acquired a new importance, and some of the most progressive composers of Italian instrumental music were active in the cappella. The principal maestri of the 17th and 18th centuries included Alessandro Grandi (i) (1627–30), Tarquinio Merula (1631–2), G.B. Crivelli (1642–8), Filippo Vitali (1649), Maurizio Cazzati (1653–7), P.A. Ziani (1657–9) and G.B. Bassani (1712–16). Among the other musicians employed there were Giovanni Legrenzi (organist, 1645–55) and C.A. Marino (violinist, 1683–96 and 1700–05). Though it was never again as important, music continued at S Maria Maggiore: Simon Mayr was maestro in the early 19th century, with an ensemble of six solo voices, organ and orchestra. His successor, Alessandro Nini (1847–77), enlarged the group of performers to 19th-century proportions. Towards the end of the century the maestri di cappella were well-known opera composers, Ponchielli (1882–6), Cagnoni (1886–90) and Pizzi (1897–1900).
The Cathedral of S Alessandro, situated in the old town next to S Maria Maggiore and strictly speaking attached to it, was musically less significant; among the maestri di cappella there were Cavaccio (1581–98) and Merula (1638–46), following his dismissal from S Maria Maggiore. S Alessandro della Croce and S Alessandro in Colonna, which served two Renaissance suburbs of Bergamo, had modest musical establishments in the early 17th century, including voices, strings and an organ. These churches all exchanged musicians with S Maria Maggiore for special celebrations.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the celebrated Serassi family of organ builders worked in Bergamo in competition with the already established firm of Antegnati at Brescia; the organ at S Alessandro in Colonna (1781) is one of Giuseppe Serassi’s most brilliant creations.
The earliest documented opera performance in Bergamo was of Cazzati’s Ercole effeminato, at the Palazzo della Ragione in 1654. The Teatro Riccardi, Bergamo’s earliest permanent opera house, was begun in 1786 and opened on 24 August 1791 with a performance of Piccinni’s Didone. It burnt down in 1797 but was rebuilt within two years. During the period 1801–9 the repertory was dominated by Mayr’s operas, and later Bellini and Verdi staged and conducted their works there; the first Italian performance of Meyerbeer’s L’étoile du nord was given in 1879 and the repertory also included works by Donizetti and Rossini. The name of the theatre changed to Donizetti to mark the centenary year, 1897, of the city’s most famous native composer. In 1937 it achieved greater national importance with the institution of the Teatro delle Novità, a scheme which aimed to stage at least three new Italian operas each year (a list of premières is in ES). The Teatro Cerri was constructed of wood in 1797 within the precincts of the Palazzo Vecchio; after ten years it was replaced by the Teatro Sociale, which flourished in the early 19th century under Mayr as an aristocratic venue for residents of the old town (the Società dei Nobili Signori).
Mayr’s presence transformed Bergamo’s musical life. He came to the city to study with Carlo Lenzi in 1789; Canon Pesenti from Bergamo supported him financially during his studies in Venice, and he became maestro di cappella of S Maria Maggiore in 1802, a position he held until his death in 1845. He started by reorganizing the vocal and instrumental ensemble of the church (one soprano, one alto, two tenors, two basses, organ, two first and two second violins, viola, double bass, two oboes and two horns); in 1805 he founded the Lezioni Caritatevoli di Musica, which, after various changes of name, became the Istituto Musicale Gaetano Donizetti in 1897, when it ceased to be attached to the cappella of S Maria Maggiore. Mayr’s organization of this school established the pattern for music schools throughout Italy. The most famous students included Donizetti, the tenor G.B. Rubini and the cellist Alfredo Piatti. From 1809 to 1824 Mayr was also director of the Teatro Sociale, where he conducted and staged his operas. He promoted performances by amateur chamber musicians (in which he took part himself) and founded the Unione Filarmonica in 1822; it met in the Teatro di S Cassiano (later the Teatro G.S. Mayr). A later chamber music society, the Società del Quartetto, was founded in 1904 as a continuation of the Unione Filarmonica. The Festival Pianistico Internazionale (held in cooperation with Brescia) began in 1964 and the Festival Donizettiano in 1982.
The Museo Donizettiano, founded in 1897 by the Bergamo scholar Cristoforo Scotti, houses autograph scores and early and recent editions of Donizetti’s operatic and instrumental music, the house of his birth is also a small museum. The Biblioteca Civica A. Mai contains important early music prints and manuscripts (described in the library’s bulletin Bergomum, lxxxvii (1992), 67–91 and 157–75; lxxxix (1994), 89–102), and some from the archives of the Misericordia Maggiore, as well as Mayr’s personal library, rich in 18th-century manuscript opera scores and his own compositions.
The most important composers born in Bergamo besides Donizetti were P.A. Locatelli and Antonio Lolli.
DEUMM (A. Gazzaniga)
ES (G. Gavazzeni)
GroveO (M. Caraci Vela)
MGG2 (C. Sartori/M. Padoan)
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G. Donati-Petteni: L’arte della musica in Bergamo (Bergamo, 1930)
A. Meli: L’istituto musicale G. Donizetti, ieri, oggi, domani (Bergamo, 1956)
C. Traini: Organari bergamaschi (Bergamo, 1958)
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R. Bowman: ‘Musical Information in the Archives of the Church of S. Maria Maggiore, Bergamo, 1649–1720’, Source Materials and the Interpretation of Music: a Memorial Volume to Thurston Dart, ed. I. Bent (London, 1981), 323–56
M. Padoan: La musica in S Maria Maggiore a Bergamo nel periodo di Giovanni Cavaccio (1598–1626) (Como, 1983)
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P. Palermo: ‘La musica nella Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore a Bergamo all’epoca dell’infanzia di Locatelli’, Intorno a Locatelli, ed. A. Dunning, ii (Lucca, 1995), 653–748
M. Eynard and R. Tibaldi: ‘Per una bibliografia delle opere a stampa dei musicisti nati o attivi a Bergamo nei secoli XVI–XVIII’, Bergomum, xci/3 (1996) [whole issue]
M. Eynard and R. Tibaldi: ‘Le fonti musicali bergamasche a stampa nell’età moderna’, Atti dell’Ateneo di scienze, lettere ed arti di Bergamo, lix (1997–8) [forthcoming]
JEROME ROCHE/RODOBALDO TIBALDI