Micaele Sparacino General Director

Program notes: La Sonnambula,
Bellini’s pastoral masterpiece

By Niel Rishoi

When Vincenzo Bellini died prematurely in 1835 at the age of 33, the world of opera was left with a sadly unfinished legacy of ten operas. Most are not performed with any regularity—Adelson e Salvini, Bianca e Fernando, Il pirata, La straniera, Zaira, and I Capuleti e I Montecchi. However, the other four — La sonnambula, Norma, Beatrice di Tenda, and I puritani — are more than sufficiently first-rate in quality to place Bellini among the masters of bel canto opera, along with Gioachino Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti.

The Sicilian Bellini was in some respects the most revered of the three — treasured for his exquisite melodic writing. He is renowned for the elegiac beauty of his “long, long melodies, such as no one before has written,” declared Giuseppe Verdi. Even Richard Wagner, ordinarily uncharitable toward Italian music, could not help but admit the “… music of Bellini is right from the heart, with an intimate co-relationship between music and text.”

Tatiyana Abiyakiy and Joyce Lundy in our recent production of Bellini's melodic dream La Sonnambula.

Nowhere is Wagner’s description so apt as when applied to Bellini’s seventh opera, La sonnambula. It may be the most typically Bellinian, with a beauty, charm and inventiveness all its own, as well the most originally conceived and free of convention of his ten operas. In no other piece of Bellini’s does he employ such truthful, simple expressive means. The characters are utterly real, human and believable, with their little dilemmas touching the heart in a very direct but engaging way. The other factor in Sonnambula’s wondrous enchantment is the eloquently poetic libretto by Felice Romani, Bellini’s favorite collaborator.

Unfortunately, the same refreshing simplicity is mistaken as “simplistic” or even silly by those who think Sonnambula lightweight and insubstantial as drama—as though serious drama requires murder, suicide, infidelity, madness and mayhem.

The drama of Sonnambula is heart-rending and very real within the lives of the characters and set to music with supreme mastery. From start to close, every number in its idyllic, semiseria pastoral setting has a distinctive luminosity and “pictorial” quality — like an album of picture postcards that follow one after another, creating a seamless whole.

In contrast with Rossini, who wove orchestra textures of utmost complexity, Bellini accompanied a straightforward story with clean arrangements that allow his intoxicating melodies to stand out, usually under an arpeggiated bass line. He took considerable pains in outlining the characters, memorably imbued with their own “voice-faces.” With Elvino’s sweetly passionate “Prendi: l’anel ti dono,” you will recognize the character’s impetuous, romantic nature, and with “Ah, perchè non posso odiarti,” you hear his passionately bull-headed wounded pride.

The dignified yearning of Count Rodolfo’s “Vi ravviso” displays the character’s mature grace — and gives the singer one of the supreme tests of vocal technique and expression in the bass voice. Liza’s tarty, fiery arias have a spicy capriciousness as she schemes for Elvino’s affections. Bellini created these gems of characterization at his pinnacle of inspiration.

Not surprisingly, though, Bellini lavished his greatest care and splendid imagination on the music of his soprano heroine, Amina. The highly exacting role tests the singer’s technical and expressive means. As Felice Romani explained: “The character of Amina, although the role may seem an easy one to perform, is likely more difficult than those considered far more important. The actress should be playful, ingenuous and innocent, and at the same time passionate, sensitive and full of love; she must have a cry for joy as well as for sorrow, and accents for both reproof and entreaty. She must show in every motion, every sigh, that elusive combination of the idealized and the realistic. Her singing must be simple as well as adorned, spontaneous yet scrupulously controlled, perfect yet showing no signs of study.”

Amina’s opening number bears out Romani’s words: Its effervescence immediately establishes her expansive, sweet and gentle nature: “Care compagne …Come per me sereno,” followed by the cabaletta, “Sovra il sen la man mi posa.” However florid in scope this cabaletta may be, its brilliance is not at all meant for superfluous display of technical savvy; the pulsating, chromatic semiquavers perfectly evoke her overflowing joy.

The climactic sleepwalking scene, “Ah, non credea mirarti,” is one of those peerless, peculiarly affecting arias that appears to float on an endless cloud of melody, seemingly carried on a single, long breath. Bellini adds a haunting pathos by ingeniously incorporating snatches of earlier themes associated with Elvino — "Prendi, l’anel" and “Ah! vorrei!” — to illustrate Amina’s heartbroken recall of happier times. Bellini’s treatment of the recitative prior to “Ah! non credea” is an equally felicitous innovation. More than any other Italian composer at the time, he heightened the melodic quality of his recitatives, making them flow elegantly into the main arias that follow. The concluding song of jubilation, “Ah! non giunge,” singularly lacks any trace of superficial dazzle usually associated with cabalettas and ideally conveys Amina’s joyful rapture at the resolution of her dilemma.

Rapture indeed is how La sonnambula was received at its tumultuously successful premiere at the Teatro Carcano in Milan, March 6, 1831. Giuditta Pasta appeared as Amina, Giovanni Battista Rubini as Elvino, and Luciano Mariani as Rodolfo. Pasta and Rubini repeated their roles for the opera’s sensational London premiere a few months later. The opera became for a time the most popular in England. Maria Malibran triumphed in the title role both in London (1833) — in English — and at La Scala (1834). Jenny Lind was prized as Amina and cited for the maidenly purity of her interpretation. Sonnambula was also unique in that its popularity — everywhere — never abated, even when bel canto fell out of favor during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Romani’s libretto was based on Scribe’s Paris Opera ballet La sonnambule ou L’arreve d’un seigneur, with music by Hèrold.

It was not the work that Bellini and Romani had planned for the 1830-31 season. Early in 1830 they had been scheduled to collaborate on an operatic treatment of Victor Hugo’s Hernani — supposedly with Giuditta Pasta in the male lead. Before they scrapped Ernani, Bellini went so far as to compose a few of the verses Romani had set (which survive in fragmentary form).

Hugo’s book was a scandalous event that same year, and all those involved with Bellini’s operatic version were understandably worried that the censors would intervene and the public would be outraged. It was left for Giuseppe Verdi to set his own Ernani in 1844.

Maria Callas was perhaps solely responsible for renewing Sonnambula’s popularity 50 years ago when she followed other great sopranos in the role, including Luisa Tetrazzini, Amelia Galli-Curci, Lily Pons, Toti dal Monte, Margherita Carosio and Lina Pagliughi. The revival, led by Luchino Visconti at La Scala in 1955, brought the opera a new stature, and paved the way for future Aminas, such as Joan Sutherland, Renata Scotto, Roberta Peters, Luciana Serra, Mariella Devia, Edita Gruberova, June Anderson, Luba Orgonasova, Natalie Dessay and Stefania Bonfadelli.

Niel Rishoi, a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has written a biography of the Slovak coloratura soprano Edita Gruberova (published in three languages), articles for The Opera Quarterly and program notes for recording companies such as Nightingale Classics.