Opera Background
The Making of La Sonnambula
In 1830, at the age of 29, Bellini was already a famous opera composer, celebrated for his long, limpid melodies and gorgeous vocal writing. But composition took a toll on his delicate health: he once claimed that he “vomited blood to compose.” After the premiere of I Capuleti e I Montecchi on March 11, 1830, the exhausted Bellini became violently ill, suffering from the intestinal disease that would kill him five years later.
Bellini went to Lake Como to recover. According to the wife of his librettist Felice Romani, it was there that the first seeds of La sonnambula were planted in the composer’s mind. Boating on the lake, Bellini listened to the songs of the girls who worked at a nearby factory floating over the water. Enchanted by the mountains, the lake and the distant voices, he contemplated setting an opera in the Alps.
But the next project he attempted had a very different atmosphere. Bellini had agreed to write an opera for Milan’s Teatro Carcano. He began to set Hernani, a radical new play by Victor Hugo. Hernani was a perfect example of Romanticism, the movement then transforming the arts. Artists like Hugo were rejecting classical values like order and reason, instead exploring violent passions, irrational fears, and overwhelming emotions. A story about a heroic bandit who defies a corrupt king, Hernani caused a riot at its premiere and transformed French theater. However, the play’s condemnation of authority made it dangerous. After difficulties with Milan’s censors, Bellini abandoned the project.
Bellini needed to find a new subject quickly. He and his librettist Romani chose La sonnambula. Romani’s libretto was based on a ballet scenario written by Eugène Scribe and J.P. Aumer, entitled La somnambule, ou l’arrivée d’un nouveau seigneur (The Sleepwalker, or the Arrival of a New Lord). It was a pastoral tale set in a peaceful Swiss village. The story couldn’t be simpler. A young girl loses her fiancée when she is discovered asleep in the bedroom of another man. Luckily, he learns that she was only sleepwalking, and they live happily ever after. The tale has none of Hernani’s radical politics or fiery rhetoric. Yet in its own way, La sonnambula is also a product of Romanticism.
In the early 19th century, scientists were struggling to understand the phenomenon of sleepwalking. Since natural sleepwalking is rare, some scientists tried to make volunteers (often young women) sleepwalk by mesmerizing them: hypnotizing them with magnets in a process then considered cutting edge, but now recognized as pseudoscience. The public was fascinated. In Paris, this research sparked a sleepwalking craze. Many ballets, operas and plays centered around the theme of sleepwalking. In fact, the ballet La somnambule inspired four popular French plays about sleepwalkers in a single year. As one Parisian journalist wrote in 1827: “It’s raining sleepwalkers. Soon there will not be room on the Paris rooftops to accommodate all the young women who wish to run across them.”
This sleepwalking fad was rooted in the Romantic era’s general obsession with hallucinations, dreams, hypnotism, trances, and madness. At the time, madness was considered an essentially female affliction, and was linked with female sexuality in Europe’s cultural imagination. Onstage, when a woman lost her love, she often lost her mind. Many bel canto operas ended with a mad scene, in which a heroine came unhinged, unleashed torrents of coloratura, and then died in an ecstatic trance.
Like madness, sleepwalking had risqué connotations. Women mesmerized by scientists were at the mercy of their hypnotizers. What if a scientist was tempted to abuse an entranced subject? What if an unscrupulous man took advantage of a “naturally” sleepwalking woman? Audiences found the idea both titillating and terrifying. But perhaps the Romantics were most interested in the idea of witnessing someone acting out their dreams. La Sonnambula draws on the Romantic era’s fascination with uncovering the passions and conflicts hidden in every mind – even the mind of an innocent girl.
Like all bel canto composers, Bellini tailored his operas to specific singers’ voices. La Sonnambula was written for two of the greatest singers in operatic history. The first Elvino was Giovanni Battista Rubini, a tenor who Bellini worked with throughout his career. Rubini had an astonishingly high, flexible voice. Today, the role of Elvino is usually transposed down several keys. Soprano Giuditta Pasta, an artist Bellini had had long admired, sang Amina. Bellini wrote some of his most gorgeous and challenging music for her. Pasta later went on to create the title roles of Bellini’s Norma and Beatrice di Tenda.
Bellini began composing La Sonnambula on January 2, 1831. He had just over a month to complete it. Pressed for time, he reused some material from his abandoned opera Ernani in the new score. Bellini missed his deadline by a few weeks, but managed to write his most accomplished opera to date. In La Sonnambula, audiences finally heard all the elements of Bellini’s mature style: his incredibly long, fluid vocal lines, his tasteful coloratura, and his graceful yet emotional melodies.
La Sonnambula premiered at the Teatro Carcano on March 6, 1831. It was a huge success. Rubini and Pasta performed their roles together again in London and Paris, and the opera was soon being produced around the globe. Today, along with Norma and I Puritani, La Sonnambula is it recognized as one of Bellini’s true masterpieces.
The role of Amina has been championed by generations of great sopranos, from Jenny Lind to Maria Callas and Renata Scotto. Powerhouse soprano Natalie Dessay will star in The Met’s new production during the 2008-2009 season. The challenging role of Elvino will be sung by great bel canto tenor Juan Diego Flórez.
- HOMEtop of page