Opera "La Somnambula": content, video, interesting facts, history

V. Bellini opera "La Somnambula"

What can make Italy's high society sob and really suffer during the carnival? Exceptional power of talent. In March 1831, on the stage of the Carcano Theater in Milan, she embodied in the music of the Italian opera genius. Vincenzo Bellini and a powerful extended-range soprano belonging to his muse, the consummate Judith Pasta. The premiere of the opera "Somnambulla" was a great success: the love story of a provincial girl, embodied on the stage, touched the emotional strings of the most critical listeners.

Summary of the opera Bellini "Somnambula"and many interesting facts about this work read on our page.

Summary of "Somnambuly"

In a small village in the foothills of the Alps - a significant event, a wedding. Amina is going to become the wife of Elvino, whom he loves with all his soul. Chosen reciprocates. Residents are sincerely happy for the young, but Lisa does not like to watch how happy the bride and groom are. The hostess of the inn wants to be on the spot newlywed and become the legitimate wife of Elvino. However, Fate decreed otherwise. At the solemn moment, Elvino puts a ring on the finger of the miller’s daughter, and Lisa remains regretted and content herself with a love affair with another, local jovialist and joker Alessio.

In the evening, the crew arrives in the village. The visiting guest accepts an invitation to join the celebration, and then shows an intention to stay in one of the hotel rooms. The hostess provides Count Rodolfo a room, talking, trying to unobtrusively find out more about him and flirt. Count flattering attention. When night falls, Liza knocks on the room of the new guest, she warns him: the locals recognize him as a lord and soon will come to show their favor. Leaving the room, the coquette drops the handkerchief.

At night, a window in the earl’s room opens, and a girl in a white robe enters the room. She mumbles something indistinctly. The lodger understands: the young lady is in a semi-conscious state, she is a lunatic, and you cannot disturb her in this position. Suddenly, an uninvited guest loses strength and lies down on the bed. Count silently, so as not to disturb her peace, goes.

Villagers come to the room to pay homage to the lady, but they notice that he is absent, and a stranger is sleeping on his bed. Lisa instantly rushes to Elvino. Having brought him into the room, she eagerly wakes the sleeping one and accuses her of inappropriate behavior, treason. Amina cannot remember how she ended up in someone else’s bed. The voices of the offended husband plunge her into confusion, shame. Elvino intends to terminate the marriage.

The count explains to the angry jealous: his young spouse is a somnambulist, she walks in a dream. However, the guy refuses to believe. For resentment, he decides to take Lisa in marriage. She is extremely happy. Newly-born couple meets the miller. She gives Lisa her handkerchief. Elvino finds out that Liza’s thing was dropped in the senor’s apartment, which means that she’s wrong for him. At this time, the inexplicable happens: a sleeping Amin enters a weak bridge over the wheel of the mill. One awkward step - it will break from the narrow crossing and die. However, the somnambulist manages to reach the opposite shore, where the girl falls on her knees and begins to pray earnestly for forgiveness. Elvino understands the count was right and honest. The young man comes to his beloved, she wakes up in his arms and understands: Elvino still loves her. There comes a universal joy, the holiday continues.

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Interesting Facts

• Somnambula includes musical excerpts and reworked scores that were previously intended for another opera, Ernani. Such a practice of borrowing from his own compositions often “slips” in the works of Bellini, who masterly taught himself to present the old motifs in a new reading in accordance with the preferred musical context.
• The success of "Somnambuly" was partly due to the unique "coincidence" of time and place. In other words, the opera was created precisely in that period when Romani and Bellini, bringing their talents to perfection separately, had an extensive experience of working together. This contributed to mutual understanding.
• Bellini only quarreled with Romani once while working on Somnambula. It happened during rehearsals. The piece was completed, the parties were learned by the performers. Bellini was not satisfied ... with his work. The completion of the second act did not give him rest. The composer wanted to make the final "chord" affirming, memorable, evoking, inspiring, and in fact - presented the score at an unhurried pace and without pronounced dynamics. It was decided to remake the final. Romani was received to write a new text. The result again did not suit the composer, the subsequent versions also, in his opinion, were no good at all. The conflict with the poet was inevitable, but the result of all the contradictions was the ambitious, from the point of view of the tesssitura, the aria of Amina from the second act, passing, according to the development of the action, into an expression of sincere, boundless joy. Bellini has found the embodiment of the idea, the most complicated number entered the history of opera art.
• Amina vocals were created specifically for Judith Negri (Pasta - after marriage). The opera diva, at the time of writing "Somnambula", has already managed to win the recognition and sympathy of listeners in Milan. In the winter of 1830 she brilliantly soloed in Carcano in the form of Anne Boleyn as part of the premiere of the opera of the same name. G. Donizetti.

• In 1834, while the maestro was still alive, Amina "gained" the voice of another opera singer, Maria Malibran, also, with a soprano who impeccably owned vocal skills in high tessiture.
• Some vocal parts are based on folk songs that Bellini overheard from simple girls who work during walks along the shores of Lake Como.
• “The master of melancholia,” as Bellini was called, fully justified his unspoken title. The opera begins with a lyrical introduction, the further musical outline is cantilena, where features of Sicilian folk songs are guessed. Bellini remained faithful to the author's style and did not lose.

The best numbers from the opera "Somnambula"

"Come per me sereno, oggi rinacque il di!" - Cavatina Amina from the first scene of the first act. (listen)

"Son geloso del zefiro errante, che ti scherza col crin e col velo" - final duo Elvino and Amina, scene 1, act 1 (listen)

"Ah! Non credea mirarti" is the key aria of Amina from the final scene of the 2nd act. (listen)

The story of the creation of "Somnambuly"

"Somnambula" was created in an atmosphere of competition, felt at different levels. Representatives of the theaters (La Scala and Carcano) competed among themselves for the right to premiere the next work of the genius bel canto, Bellini could not escape the feeling of a certain creative contest with G. Donizetti, whose "Anna Bolein" only in December 1830 created a sensation. Finally, the composer himself came into confrontation with his kind: intending to create an opera based on the plot of V. Hugo, after a few months of work, he gave up a serious idea with acute social overtones and plunged into the world of human passions and spiritual aspirations.

The contractual terms with the theater obliged Bellini to provide for the winter season of 1830-1831 a new opera for the production. In the middle of the summer of 1830, Vincenzo began writing music for Hernani. Circumstances evolved safely. Bellini had the opportunity to have the time and talent of librettist Felice Romani and dared to reasonably hope that his Muse Pasta would agree to play the leading female role. However, work on the work soon stopped. Romani became interested in writing the libretto for Gaetano Donizetti and his lyrical tragedy about the wife of Henry VIII. Bellini at this time was in a creative crisis, realizing that the theme of his new opera will certainly be criticized in the ruling circles and banned by the supervisory authorities. November came, Bellini didn’t have a finished work in his hands, and Hernani was never destined to find completion.

In January 1831, Romani had already worked on the libretto for the opera "La Sonnambula". The plot was borrowed from the ballet pantomime of the French playwright E. Scribe, successfully presented in Paris in 1827. The audience accepted the work favorably that meets the fashion trends of the time. Romani made corrections to the literary basis: he “transferred” the scene from Provence to Switzerland, gave the heroes new names.

Taking as a basis for the opera a story about a lunatic bride, Bellini had little doubt of success. The pastoral picture of the life of the villagers in the Swiss province was presented in conjunction with a demonstration of the unusual phenomenon of the so-called "odic" power, which had only just begun to be talked about in scientific circles. The action would invariably arouse the curiosity and interest of the sophisticated aristocracy, a little tired of the historical retrospective in art.

Bellini worked on "Somnambula" in D. Paste's house on Lake Como. The mansion of the singer was often turned into a kind of salon, where people of art, composers, poets, and other Bohemian people hospitably received. A place in a picturesque corner of Italy has a beneficial effect on the creative process. There Bellini was able to improve his health a little. During his stay in Venice, where the premiere of "Capulets and Montecchi" in 1830, Bellini felt the strongest indisposition, which he himself chose to call "gastric fever." Pains in the intestines and stomach have already begun to manifest themselves periodically, escalating against the background of overwork. Being in a lake by the lake helped the composer to forget about the disease for a while and work fruitfully.

For the first time "La Somnambula" was put on the stage of Carcano in Milan. This happened on March 6, 1831. In July, the opera was successfully performed on the stage of the Royal Theater in London. In the autumn of 1835, after the death of Bellini, "Somnambulu" expected success in New York, on the stage of the Park Theater.

Bellini He was buried at home in Catania. The grave, located in one of the halls of the Cathedral of Saint Agatha, is decorated with the phrase: “I could not believe it, so soon you can die! Oh, flower!”. Piercing in the mood of the word borrowed from the final aria of the main heroine of the opera "Somnambula". Bellini, like Amina, already" will not rise from a dream. "However, his invisible genius still does not leave the stage of the best theaters in the world, incarnating in melodic arias, performed in the technique of bel canto by modern masters of opera art.