La sonnambula

“Give me good verses and I will give you good music,” said Bellini, and so it is with La Sonnambula (1831). One of seven collaborations between the composer and his most skilled librettist, poet Felice Romani, it’s an unexpectedly sincere and carefully characterised drama about love, jealousy and superstition. Sleepwalking, inspiration for novelists, playwrights and composers, became big business at the turn of the 19th century. And Bellini capitalised on this evocative theme in his pastoral opera semiseria, a work that sits midway between comedy and tragedy. A Swiss village supplies a sufficiently remote setting for a story that comes close to fable. Villagers Amina and Elvino are engaged. But when Amina unknowingly sleepwalks into the bedroom of Count Rodolfo, Elvino breaks off the relationship. He quickly trades one potential bride for another, but before they can marry, a sleepwalking Amina appears, mourning her lost love. Elvino realises his error and finally claims her as his wife. The supple sweetness and classical elegance of Bellini’s melodies temper the composer’s Romantic instincts, creating a disarming flow of mood and tone. The composer ups the operatic ante with dramatic subtlety: tenor Elvino’s vacillations are handled with real sympathy and tremendous vocal fireworks, and the role of Amina is both spectacularly high and demanding. Her arias, especially the final sleepwalking episode, a ‘mad scene’ by any other name, have been and remain favourite concert showpieces for sopranos including Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland.