LA SONNAMBULA Vincenzo Bellini
CONTENTS
Synopsis
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The Female Gravitational Centre of a Solar System → Interview with conductor Giacomo Sagripanti
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Fragile Oblivion → Marco Arturo Marelli
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Can You Not See Her? → Daniela Heisig
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Context for Bellini’s Sonnambula → Sergio Morabito
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Bellini’s Operas in Vienna → Michael Jahn
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LA SONNAMBULA Melodramma in two acts Music Vincenzo Bellini Libretto Felice Romani
Orchestra 2 flutes, 1 piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 cimbasso, timpani, violin I, violin II, viola, cello, doublebass Stage music 2 flutes, 1 piccolo, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, tamburro, gran cassa, clamps Lenght 2 hours 45 minutes, including 1 interval Autograph Ricordi archives World première 6 March 1831, Teatro Carcano, Milan Première at the Court Opera Vienna 8 February 1872
SYNOPSIS Act 1 Amina’s upcoming wedding with Elvino is being celebrated. Only Lisa, Elvi no’s former lover, is sad. She does not want to resign herself to the new admirer Alessio. During the engagement ceremony Elvino slips the ring of his recently deceased mother on to Amina’s finger. A stranger arrives. It is Count Rodolfo, who originally comes from this region, but nobody recognizes him. He notices Amina and starts complimen ting her, thus provoking Elvino’s jealousy. Amina’s foster mother Teresa finally breaks up the gathering by warning from a dreaded phantom who haunts the area at night. Amina soothes Elvino’s jealousy. Lisa, having guessed the Count’s real identity, courts him, trying to get his attention. This is when Amina enters the room sleepwalking, she is longing for Elvino. The Count forces himself not to abuse from the situation with the lovely, half-dressed young woman. But Lisa calls Elvino; when he finds Amina sleeping, wrapped in Rodolfo’s coat, the situation seems obvious to him. It is Teresa alone who comforts abandoned and desperate Amina.
Act 2 Elvino buries himself in his pain. Amina’s protestation of her innocence is in vain; Elvino takes the ring from her finger and breaks off the engagement. Lisa already sees herself as Elvino’s new bride. Rodolfo tries to rectify the wrong suspicions, explaining that Amina was sleepwalking and that she is not guilty of any wrongdoing. But he cannot convince Elvino. When Teresa finds out about Elvino’s new wedding plans, she reveals what she saw hap pening between Lisa and Rodolfo the night before. Elvino believes that he ↑ has also been betrayed by the “second bride”. pages: While Count Rodolfo tries to save the situation by protesting Amina’s Previous scene innocence, she appears again sleepwalking. When Elvino sees her in this → state, he understands how the equivocal situation could arise the evening Stefania Bonfadelli as before. He embraces her again as his bride and Amina sings about her bliss. Amina, 2001 SY NOPSIS
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THE FEMALE GRAVITATIONAL CENTRE OF A SOLAR SYSTEM Interview with Conductor Giacomo Sagripanti
Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti are often referred to in the same breath as bel canto composers. But how does a Bellini opera semiseria like La sonnambula differ from the corresponding works of the other two?
← KS Juan Diego Flórez as Elvino, 2017
First of all, I wouldn’t define Sonnambula as pure opera semiseria. Sonnambula has the spirit of dramma semiserio, purged, even if not entirely, of comic nuances and set in the most noble form of opera seria. Sonnambula is directly inspired by Aminta by Torquato Tasso and Pastor fido by Battista Guarini. These two theatrical pieces are defined as favola pastorale (pastoral fairy tales), a theatrical form from the late 16th century which draws on the idyllic world of mythical Arcadia; there, death is an imminent presence and the lives of “simple” characters (farmers, she pherds, mountain folk) can rise to sublime importance in the tragedy which convention used to reserve for kings, captains, etc. The main message of Sonnambula is the possibility of sublimation for human beings. That said, to be sure the main difference between Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini is melodic flair, which in Bellini attains a quality never achieved by the other two com posers.
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IN T ERV IEW W IT H CON DUCTOR GI ACOMO SAGR IPA N T I
GIACOMO SAGRIPANTI:
You say: “Purged, even if not entirely, of comic nuances". That is, a certain amount of comedy is still very much present. The presence of comedy or irony is justified by the character of the opera, which demands great seriousness to avoid a fully tragic style or aulic solemnity. That’s why we have comedic moments, mostly found in the chorus. GS
So what is the unique selling point of Sonnambula within Bellini’s œuvre – why was Sonnambula probably Bellini’s most successful opera, his only opera that never disappeared from the international repertoire? Sonnambula is unquestionably Bellini’s opera with the greatest melodic flair. That’s why it is unique, always present in the theatre reper toires and the most successful opera by the Sicilian composer. He achieved this level of melodic mastery again only in his last opera, I puritani. GS
Where do we find Bellini’s musical sources, what was he influenced by apart from Rossini – and what did he expand on? With Sonnambula, Bellini breaks off with any other previous composer, in terms of innovation of melodic inspiration. What Bellini takes from the past is the format of the opera. Sonnambula is maybe the most conventional of all Bellini’s operas: both acts start with a choral introduction, the first one incorporates Lisa’s short cavatina, very like Rossini’s practice. All the characters are introduced with the typical cavatina form and in order. In the whole opera we finally find only two ensembles (Duetto no. 6 and Quartetto no. 11), and if you will the “ghost chorus” no. 5. In the middle we have the big Finale no. 7, based on the Concertato-Pair Lento-Stretta. GS
Nevertheless, the forms of the arias and ensembles seem to be quite free. Some arias have only one tempo, others two, some arias and ensembles merge into each other... The “how” of a musical form depends on the source of the libretto (as I mentioned, the favola pastorale) and on the decisions that Romani and Bellini made together. GS
The prelude to the opera is quite rapid and, moreover, does not have the dichotomy expected at the time of its composition. The prelude has the purpose of introducing us to the environment of the favola pastorale. It has more a didactic function than a proper Prelude. We are already in the story. GS
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In what way does Bellini create atmosphere – for example, the “haunted scene”? Bellini creates atmosphere for each scene in many different ways. One example is the “ghost chorus” (no. 5): for the first time in the opera, the chorus introduces the topic of the “ghost”, a supernatural element in the simple and pure atmosphere of pastoral Switzerland. In the introduction of this spectacular chorus, Bellini uses a trombone in the orchestra, which plays an ascending E flat major scale. The unique colour of the trombone as a solo instrument and the rising scale together describe the special moment, creating “ghost atmosphere” in a simple but very effective way. GS
Bellini’s musical skill at characterizing the individual actors in Sonnam bula has often been praised. What is it all about? The music-psychological drawing of the characters is based on a very clear concept: Amina is the gravity centre of an ordered solar system. Everything depends on her, and everything focuses on her – the chorus and all the other characters. Elvino is the character we need in order to express the big social difference of the plot, the difference between Amina and Elvino. A patriarchal view of the world. But Elvino is not totally negative: his inner journey drives him to understand the “truth”, which is true and pure love, the authenticity of a pure love, what pure love is. Musically we notice this change in Elvino when we compare the “academic nature” of his first lines at the beginning of the opera with the totally new and much more expressive lines at the end of the opera. Furthermore, Bellini draws the psychology of the characters with different utilization of musical forms and melodic patterns. An example is the no. 2 (Cavatina Elvino): in the middle of the perfect bonds of love between Elvino and Amina, which is anchored in an almost religiously solemn moment, Amina starts the stretta with a new and incredibly touching stylized melody somewhere between a waltz and mazurka, which expresses the internal emotion and the modest reticence of the young and pure girl. GS
Is Amina’s grand but also small dream aria at all a typical mad aria of this time? A good question, which I would like to answer with a definite no. Sonnambulism (as the madness) was a topic scientifically studied and very much used in literary, theatrical and figurative representation of the 18th century, finding different utilization in opera. Why? Because an altered men tal status can be much more appropriately expressed in music, and especially “with singing”. But Amina’s somnambulism is not madness, it is a temporary mental state, totally different from Imogene’s delirium in Bellini’s Il pirata or GS
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any other mad scene (Lucia di Lammermoor, Elivra in I puritani etc.). For Elvira and Lucia, madness is a way to escape from reality. Amina’s somnambulism is a way to life’s and love’s regeneration. The only thing these two paths have in common is that neither of them are rationales. Amina’s somnambulism is how love becomes more authentic, a way of sublimation of love, and it helps in the conversion of Elvino. In fact, the opera has a happy ending, so there’s a moral and ethical message which does not ask “Is Amina guilty or not?” but “what it is authentic love?” Musically the somnambulism is the moment where Amina expresses at her best all the inner and universal nature of love. The beauty of the melodic lines is so pure that it is impossible not to understand that the truth is represented by Amina’s status. It is obvious that the chorus, made up of country people, does not have too complex a musical structure. But what about Count Rodolfo in this respect – he is the only educated person, a nobleman? Does his music stand out from the rest of the cast? The Count’s music stands out only in representing the purity of his home. The description of the atmosphere is represented with beautiful and pure melody, which is the best way for Bellini to express the genuineness of an emotion. GS
Did Bellini take a special approach to instrumentation of Sonnambula? Is there a distinctive Sonnambula orchestra? An interesting thing is how Bellini uses the trombone, to express – as I said already – the supernatural, when describing for example the “ghost chorus”. The general orchestration looks like the typical Bellini orchestration, but not yet fully developed: Bellini achieved his best orchestration in Puritani, because as was the case with every Italian composer (Verdi included) he wrote Puritani for a French audience and for French theatres, which always required more refined orchestration, typical of French opera. It was absolu tely important for Italian composers to pay attention to orchestration in order to be successful in France. GS
There is something like memory motifs in Sonnambula – is this already the precursor of Wagnerian leitmotifs? Are such memory motifs an invention of Bellini? No, I wouldn’t compare the “memory motifs” (present in fact only in the last scene) with Wagnerian leitmotifs. Wagnerian leitmotifs are in every sense the expression of a particular character, from the beginning to the end. Bellini didn’t use musical motifs in the same way, he doesn’t reshape the musi GS
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cal themes. As the word says, it is a “memory motif” not a motif with a dramatic function. Memory motifs are peculiar to Bellini, something he developed for sure, but we also find examples in Rossini (serious operas or semiserious operas) and Donizetti. Sonnambula is considered an important example of Italian romantic opera. In what ways is the “romantic” apparent in the music? The grace and the expression of the melody are two of the most important characteristics of the romantic period. In this connection, we need only to think to the close connection between Chopin and Bellini. GS
One often reads in the literature that the coloraturas in Sonnambula are never an end in themselves. To what extent is that true? Coloraturas in belcanto are never an end in themselves, starting back with Rossini. In serious belcanto coloraturas are used to show the emo tion of the moment. They are not a pure and empty display of virtuoso (as was the case in the baroque era), there’s an evolution which reaches its highest point in Bellini and leads directly to Verdi. GS
And where does the bel canto tradition fundamentally continue? Is Verdi more likely to start with Bellini, Rossini or Donizetti? Verdi is a composer who derives entirely from belcanto: without belcanto we wouldn’t have any Verdi. To be sure, he’s closer to Bellini, but most ly in regard to the formal habits of already developed belcanto, particularly concerning the birth of new vocal registers or type of voice: if we compare Norma and Nabucco, we have the biggest example of “pass the baton”, for many aspects (formally, vocally, dramatically). Of course, for Verdi belcanto is only “the bridge” that he used to start his own and special musical journey. GS
→ Next pages: scene
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T HE FEM A LE GR AV ITAT IONA L CEN T R E OF A SOLA R SYST EM
Marco Arturo Marelli
FRAGILE OBLIVION
Excerpts from the concept discussion
In the tragic works on which Italian operas in the first part of the 19th cen tury were based, mad scenes with women without restraints abound. He roines whose entire lives were built around their partner become outsiders due to social pressures; they find themselves in irreconcilable conflicts and escape into oblivion, go completely to pieces and die as a result of extreme psychological circumstances. At first glance, Amina does not seem to belong in this category, and her emotional troubles do not seem to be explained by the tensions between her, her love and society. The action of the opera constantly presents images of happy peasants in freshly washed, delightfully traditional Sunday wear in an idyllic landscape. The contract signing occurs in Act 1, with the church wedding due to take place the next day. So why do the “day’s residues” impinge on Amina’s sub conscious mind, why does she start seeking the happiness that life seems to deny her in a dreaming and sleep-walking state? Why does she dream of what she could experience the next day, why does she have to achieve it through dreaming? This became a decisive question for us, because it is our intention to take this divinely beautiful bel canto work – I would almost say “ballet for voices and orchestra” – and with it create a psychologically compact drama that will also fascinate today’s audiences.
Magic Mountain We have kept the setting of the Swiss Alps, but moved the action to a kind of hotel, or rather sanatorium. A place like the one described by Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain. A different concept of time prevails there – Thomas Mann writes about a broadening of the present – people live in their emo tions. In this thin air where time seems to stand still (as it does sometimes in Bellini’s music), rather strange people populate the scene, far from the hus tle and bustle of the “lowlands”. “People in the hotel!”, idlers, people with mild tuberculosis as well as more serious cases, who on the verge of death take a strange delight in music, people withdrawn from the world, opera freaks too, as well as rich guests and the hotel’s simple staff. This artificiality creates the framework for the production. After various disputes with the board of censors (he initially wanted to set the politically charged drama Hernani), Bellini spent several weeks at a health spar on Lake Como. In this Arcadia, in self-imposed internal exile almost completely cut off from reality, he composed La sonnambula, a story that had created a furore a few years earlier as a ballet. It is almost impossible to determine in retrospect whether his illness was due entirely to physical factors or if it was the result of operatically staged escapism. The little contact that Bellini had with others during his isolation 15
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included meetings with Giuditta Pasta, the singer who was to be his Amina. In the production this biographic note appears again in different form. El vino too, himself a young composer, super-aesthete, is an occupant of the sanatorium. He has been living in that closed society and secluded world to get over losing his mother. In Act 1, he talks about her incessantly and about almost nothing else, his thoughts often revolve around memories of her when he talks to Amina. I imagine the mother as a famous singer or dancer. He has accompanied her on her travels. He met Amina up here, she works here, perhaps in the kitchen; it was here that he heard her singing for the first time, and the sound of her voice touched and inspired him. He accordingly decides on the spot to marry her, although he has previously had a “good time” with Lisa. In this marriage with his idealized artistic character, he regards himself as her creator. The girl submits to his suggestions, demonstrating almost no will of her own. In her he is looking not just for his ideal image of a woman; to him, Amina also means the rebirth of his mother. Any slight intimation that Amina per haps no longer loves him, or might even leave him to live outside his world or even assert herself in her own existence causes Elvino instantly to break down completely and engage in a distinctly infantile reaction full of egoistic defiance and male self-pity. Naturally Amina must wear the wedding dress of his deceased mother, and it is his mother’s ring that he gives her. In Amina, Elvino discovers his model of femininity; everything about her seems mouldable to him. He shows no interest in her as a person, her personal problems, even her “illness”, her differentness. He projects all his own ideas onto her: the man’s view of how his wife should be. And initially she willingly allows herself to be pressed into this mould. Since she loves him, she goes along with everything, responds to his every wish.
Amina – Anima This is how a story might start: someone from the staff marries a rich artist from the city. Amina is suddenly discovered. She can sing, she will become a star, initially has no idea what is happening to her and is amazed at every thing happening around her, how she is suddenly being treated. Elvino also introduces her to his rich relatives from high society, she is put on display and paraded. She goes along with everything just to please Elvino. Because she loves him, she tries to live up to his image, thereby losing her own identity. When I see the name of the lead character, Amina, I have to think of “Anima”, which means soul in Italian, but in the language of C.G. Jung it means the feminine side of a man: “The anima makes up the totality of the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a man possesses – moods, emotions, intuition, susceptibility to the irrational, personal capacity for love, M A RCO A RT U RO M A R ELLI
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sense of nature, and most important of all connection to the subconscious. It was not by accident that many nations used to use priestesses to divine the will of the gods.” (C.G. Jung, Man and his Symbols) Accordingly, we too tried to look at the work from the perspective of that very immature individual named Elvino. He has lost his mother and now wants to put Amina on a pedestal in her place. She becomes a woman in white, romantic love, a projection of desire. Amina’s co-workers have orga nized a celebration for her. Alessio, a waiter from the village, has even writ ten a song for her. Elvino’s sophisticated relatives are amongst the guests. Amina is so amazed at the scale of this celebration that her heart skips a beat for joy. The bridegroom is expected to arrive at any moment, and she is being made ready for him. She is to wear Elvino’s mother’s wedding dress, but it does not fit her at all; however, she is so deliriously happy that she pays little attention to her slight sense of unease. She is so astonished at everything that is happening to her. Being the centre of attention for once is all that she has ever desired. She is so happy she feels she is almost floating and notices neither Lisa’s resentment and jealousy nor the change in herself. Just for the sake of pleasing Elvino, she allows herself to be transformed, becomes entirely his fantasy image, but only initially feels at ease in the role intended for her. She may not even accept Rodolfo’s compliments; Elvino wants her for himself alone, jealously shutting her away from everyone else to dominate his muse and beloved: “Son geloso del zefiro errante...” – and she fulfils his dreams in the second duet. She starts defining herself through him (“Amo il sol, perché teco il divido...”), thereby giving up her own individuality. The happiness the couple professes is elusive, their momentary close ness is fleeting. As if they suspect that their union is impossible, they keep declaring their love and bitter loneliness. Much remains unspoken in this wonderfully enraptured duet; we already see the dream world into which Amina is drawn as if by an undertow, to which she will retreat to find hap piness in her dreams. “Pur nel sonno il mio cor ti vedrà...”
The dream as a play Oblivious to the world, both characters sing of their happiness, and by the end of the duet they have almost become two “somnambulists,” each willing to lose themselves in their own fantasy and dream world. However, above all Amina’s emotional plight remains unspoken. She has not told Elvino ab out her sleep-walking. Teresa knows about it, and at nightfall she suddenly sends everyone away. Lisa suspects it and as the “White Lady” in the “ghost chorus” tries to compromise Amina by making clear allusions to Amina’s 17
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absences in front of all the guests. Lisa, the other woman, the flesh and blood one, takes an immediate interest in the foreign guest by the name of Rodolfo, whose identity she discovers and whose attentions she coquettishly courts. The nocturnal dialogue at the bar between her and the ageing Don Juan just before they retire for the night turns into a salacious clandestine rendezvous, in the course of which she loses a shoe. This is then exposed as the corpus delicti in Act 2. This erotic situation is interrupted by Amina, who enters from the sno wy landscape outside. She comes in sleep-walking, half-naked, without the wedding dress that was not hers, returning to the place of her last “Addio” to Elvino, not just to be close to him but also to reveal herself to him: love me as I am, even in my otherness, with my affliction, and not as your image. She emphasizes this candour through her erotic calling for him. Her dreaming ego is therefore only partially identical to her wakeful ego. Her dream reveals another, more intimate world than the daytime world. In this intensely experienced vision, present, past and future are merged. The actual events of the past day, her fear of being deserted due to her ill ness, and her desperate desire for fulfilment of her love show Amina at her most profound and most genuine. This dream is staged like a play. She ima gines the scene, adjusts the candles, and kneels at the altar before expres sing her sensuous longing with her sob of “Elvino abbracciami”. Her dream is also a protection mechanism against the regularity and normality of life, revival from her previously constricted imagination, whe re now all the images of her life are confused. In her childish innocence she acts out the eagerly anticipated wedding scene, landing in her acting in the arms of a not at all innocent Count. It takes a great effort for him to force himself to play the game and not take erotic advantage of the situation with the sleeping girl. When she enters again as an abstracted day-dreamer at the end of the se cond act, the Count once again enacts this decisive scene with her. He arranges all the props, lights the candles, but then lets Elvino take his place. Through his demonstration, we realize not only Amina’s innocence, but also his own vindication and release from her nightmare. Thanks to his impromptu ri tual, Rodolfo brings about her cure, almost like a modern psychotherapist.
The catastrophe Initially however, the end of Act 1 has all the signs of ending in catastrophe. Lisa, who has observed all the above events, fetches Elvino, who finds the sleeping Amina wrapped in the count’s heavy fur coat. Lisa’s plan to win El vino for herself again takes its course. Amina’s loneliness is harrowing; El vino dashes all her hopes of finding in him someone who will love and un M A RCO A RT U RO M A R ELLI
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derstand her unconditionally. Her dream is over. Although the words of the grand duet in the Act 1 finale talk about Amina’s transgression from Elvino’s standpoint, about her breach of fidelity. As if in a trance, all the characters follow only Amina’s melody. All of them are without fail fascinated by her, even though they try to resist her emotional dominance. At the actual mo ment of the disclosure, above all the music makes one thing clear: prejudi ce and Amina’s innocence. But Elvino provokes a scandal without concern for Amina, displaying uncontrolled aggression towards his own ideal. With cruel emotion, he publicly denounces Amina, almost as if he were dragging her by the hair to a tribunal. The music becomes a wave of aggression and at the same time a natural process: the emotional ice age has begun. Elvino frantically destroys his dream of the artist and the muse, helpless ly demolishing his piano, not suspecting that by doing so he is also numbing all his emotions. Act 1 ends with his “Non più nozze”. Amina is left alone, outcast by everyone except Teresa. There is no need for physical distance in Act 2, as foreseen by the origi nal. A snow storm rages all night and the ice crystals blown in through the open windows transform the entire set into a wintry frozen landscape. Ami na is unable to take a single step, staying alone and helpless as if chained to the spot where she had collapsed. Elvino huddles in the background by his demolished piano, like a woun ded animal, looking in the snowdrift like the painting “The Wreck of Hope”. He constantly wallows in his own pain and his own vulnerability. The re peated notes in the orchestra give the situation an air of immutability. Elvi no refuses to withdraw his accusation, even though the “people in the hotel” are able to convince him of her innocence. As someone who feels his vanity, his pride and his honour have been violated, as if on a rampage he is willing to destroy everything that he previ ously valued and held dear. Incapable of recognizing this himself, he plun ges into alcoholic stupor. Completely disoriented and submitting totally to his emotions, he then creates an entirely absurd situation with his marriage to Lisa. However, betrayed by Lisa, he becomes a two-time loser when her relationship with the count is revealed. He cannot extract himself from this entanglement. Rodolfo will have to heal two patients.
From projection to prima donna At the end of Act 1, Elvino did not stand by his emotions, he has demolished his instrument. His love and his ability to express himself have died from freezing. At the end of the opera, Amina walks in a trance over the demo lished piano. She becomes the ghost that everyone, including Amina, feared in Act 1. She can forge her way to a new existence over the piano pieces and 19
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gain her freedom. Everyone now knows about her illness; she has nothing more to hide. Now she can accept new engagements, pursue a career like Elvino’s mother, and he will follow her. One of the few stage directions in the score says at this point that he falls on his knees in front of her, because he once again has what he wanted. And Amina has understood what she now is: a prima donna.
→ Lawrence Brownlee as Elvino, 2012
FR AGILE OBLI V ION
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Daniela Heisig
CAN YOU NOT SEE HER?
Emotions prompted by the Anima
The following dream of a 24-year old man illustrates how overwhelming the sudden presence of the anima in one’s consciousness can be. I am visiting a friend. We are sitting on the veranda. I am leafing through an art history book. In it an older, strict art professor has written his opinion of my pictures. Although they are “pathetic” they can nevertheless be viewed. At the moment when I read these words, strange things start to happen. Without any force visibly moving it, a record brush starts moving fast and in a straight line across the floor. “What the devil is going on?” I call out and run after the brush. As I round the corner, I see something that nearly takes my breath away. Before me, at a lower level, is an unfinished cellar with a roof, but you can still see inside. Here in the darkness stands a woman in a white dress. When she sees me, she climbs up to me and approaches me. She is a beautiful, young woman, around my age. I am virtually petrified with terror. I grasp her hand because I want to know: is she real? I reflect: either I have lost my mind, or this woman is a ghost, or she is real. I call to my friend: “Can you not see her?” The appearance of the woman in the white dress is accompanied by strong feelings of fear and fascination. This ambivalent emotion is typical for unconscious content that emerges at the periphery of the threshold of consciousness. The woman rises from the depths as if from a dark grave and comes to life. She is draped in a wedding dress that indicates her virginity and purity, but also the possibility of an association with her. She is fascina ting, draws the dreamer in irresistibly, almost forcibly, under her spell, and evokes powerful yearning. For the dreamer, it is his female mirror image, and after waking he feels deep love for her and a yearning to encounter her. The woman stirs emotions that Jung has attributed to anima: “[anima and animus] are generally perceived as fascinating or numinous. They are often rooted in an ambience of sensitivity, untouchability, secrecy, distressing in timacy and even unconditionality.” The concept of numinosity introduced by Rudolf Otto describes the paradox experience of the “holy” as “Myste rium tremendum et fascinosum”. And so the mysteriousness of the woman also fascinates our dreamer to the point of deep emotion. At the same time, he trembles, for through her a spark of the goddess takes effect. Despite all her fascination, meeting with the dream woman is deeply unsettling to the dream ego, with effects ranging from doubts to paralysis. The emergence of the anima archetype either stirs the awareness or un settles it. Often that which has been cast out to the darkest depths bursts forcefully and overpoweringly to life, confronting consciousness with un familiar content. Precisely because this content has been ousted from one’s own life, this induces extreme fear. The feminine aspects of the dreamer emerge in the female figure from the unconscious of the dreamer. Jung’s words could have been written precisely for this dream: “Striving against this, indeed fear of it, shows how great the allure and seductive power of the lower self are. Separation from the lower self is no solution, but is pre 23
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tence, a significant misjudgement of its value and meaning.” The dreamer is an artist who at the time of his dream is viewing his pictures critically and with doubts and experiences a creative crisis. The dream impressively reveals how greatly he is impeded in his work by rational evaluation of his artistic endeavours stemming from an inner authoritarian stratum. The dis tance to his creative products is also expressed in the representation of his pictures in the art history book, a desiccated and abstract world compared to the living images. The judgement of the professor in the dream prompts the onset of the irrational. The Anima’s contrariness to the actual situation shows much she is is offsetting the consciousness of the dreamer. She guides him into a world beyond evaluation and abstraction, a world of irrationality and emotions, she leads him from the masculine to the feminine realm, from the exterior to the interior, from above to below, from object to the animate. She is the light in the darkness. The origin of the woman also symbolizes that the creativity of the dreamer lies in his own original depths, in the – feminine – world of the irrational. Jung ascribes the numinosity of the anima to the specific meaning of de stiny of this archetype, as was clear for example in the figures of the sphinx, Cassandra, and the white woman, who was a harbinger of death. All these characters have in common that they decide over life and death and predict portentous events – in the case of Cassandra the fall of Troy – that cannot be averted. The feelings of absoluteness, of the irresistible effect of the anima on the ego, are also incorporated in the archetypal background from which the anima figure originates, since archetypes in general have a strong sug gestive effect. In a survey, Verena Kast formulated a more precise definition of the emotions associated with the anima. The spiritual fascination and the sense of becoming more alive with the anima were central details. “Expressions such as ‘longing for merging’, ‘longing for symbiosis and the feeling of never having quite attained symbiosis’ were associated with anima... But being transported by art, painting, poetry, the phenomenon of being able to lose oneself in something, was described as an emotion that can be experienced in constellations of the anima. [...] it is an emotion of expanding, of being firmly completely in life, of being able to let go, and also of equanimity.”
→ KS Anna Netrebko as Amina, 2006
CA N YOU NOT SEE HER?
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Sergio Morabito
BACKGROUNDS TO BELLINI’S SONNAMBULA The real source text for the libretto It is no secret that Felice Romani based his libretto for Vincenzo Belli ni’s La sonnambula on existing texts. Until now, a ballet scenario by Eugène Scribe was thought to be the only direct source. As I will show, Romani in fact drew on a contemporary theatre adaptation of the ballet and included classical models in his text. The ballet La Somnambule ou L’Arrivée d’un nouveau Seigneur (The Sleepwalker, or The Arrival of a new feudal lord) was premièred on 19 September 1827. The authors were Eugène Scribe (scenario), Jean-Pierre Aumer (sce nario co-author, choreography), and Ferdinand Hérold (music). Just a few weeks later, on 15 October, the première of the vaudeville comedy La Villageoise somnambule ou Les deux fiancées (The sleepwalking village maid or The two brides [also The two fiancées]) by Armand d’Artois (or Dartois) and Henri Dupin was seen at the Théâtre des Variétés. This “comedy with singing” is an adaptation of the ballet which adheres largely to the source material. SERGIO MOR A BITO
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Although the name Eugène Scribe is not mentioned on the script for the comedy, we can nevertheless assume that no third-party plagiarism took place since both the comedy and the ballet scenario were premièred in the same year – 1827 – and published by the same house ( J.-N. Barba, editor). Additionally, one of the two authors, Henri Dupin, was a co-worker of Scribe’s. The assumption that this adaptation was intended to duplicate the commercial success that the original ballet had enjoyed is almost certainly correct. Bellini research regards Felice Romani’s libretto for Sonnambula as a di rect adaptation of the ballet scenario by Eugène Scribe. However, some of the differences between the libretto and the ballet attributed to Romani are borrowings from vaudeville comedy, as a comparison of the works shows. One example is development of the relationship between the innkeeper and the notary with the creation of a new character: her naive, slightly clumsy admirer and suitor, later Alessio in the opera. Another is the ghost theme, subsequently the source for Bellini’s famous “Coro del fantasma”, and also the fact that the ring that Elvino gives to Amina the evening before the wed ding belonged to his mother. Furthermore, there is the rotten plank that the sleeping Amina walks along; all these are not “stock elements of the poet (Romani)” but borrowed from vaudeville comedy. The composer also followed through with an idea –
← The literary model of Bellini’s / Romanis La sonnambula, discovered in 2012
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in this case purely musical – from the comedy. There it states that when the sleepwalker appears in the stranger’s room: “the orchestra softly plays the ghost’s song that was first sung in Act 1.” And so at the relevant moment (as Rodolfo says the words: “Could it be the ghost that walks at night?”) Bellini quotes the music he had earlier used to accompany Teresa’s warning. It is all the more surprising that this has not previously been noted since one of the few letters that Bellini wrote while composing the opera refers without any doubt to the comedy. In a note dated 3 January 1831 stating that he and Romani had abandoned work on their adaptation of Hugo’s Hernani to avoid censorship conflicts, Bellini elaborates: ...Instead he [Romani] is now writing La sonnambula ossia I due fidanzati svizzeri; as a result, I was only able to start on the introduction yesterday. As you can see, once again I have very little time to write this opera...” The subtitle proposed by Bellini (and later rejected by the authors) is clearly derived from the comedy (Les deux fiancées). However, here are two differences between the subtitle of the comedy and that proposed for the opera. Firstly: the decision to move the action from the Camargue to Switzerland had obviously already been made. And secondly: Bellini transforms the two (female!) fiancées of the original story into a couple: The Swiss engaged couple. There are two possible explana tions for this, one being a lapse on his part (he may only have heard and misunderstood the title of Romani’s source text). Alternatively, the two of them may have intentionally changed the subtitle in order to highlight the central couple – Amina and Elvino – instead of the two brides competing for Elvino’s affections. This would then also fit with the two protagonists Giuditta Pasta and Giovanni Battista Rubini, for whom the opera was to be tailor-made. The fact that Bellini’s hint was not heeded is surely due in part to the fact that the plot of the ballet is largely identical in the comedy. In addition, many of the dancers’ pantomime gestures were already formulated in direct or indirect speech by Scribe and were simply written out by the authors of the comedy. Due to all these verbal uniformities and borrowings and the opera being composed so soon after the ballet, the ballet seemed without doubt to be Romani’s source material. Any search for other literary interme diary material seemed redundant. Another important setting by Romani – to date ignored in the second ary literature – further indicates elaboration of the comedy script: namely that Elvino was in a relationship with Lisa before his engagement to Amina. This complication resulted in the new subtitle for the comedy. In Scribe, the jealousy felt by the local innkeeper (who incidentally is a widow) stems from her amorous feelings, which are clearly not reciprocated. Only in the comedy by d’Artois/Dupin were these feelings mutual. When Edmon (Elvi no in the opera) returns to her after Thérèse’s (=Amina) apparent infidelity SERGIO MOR A BITO
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and wants to marry her, she reminds him, already in the wedding dress: “You once swore to love your true friend for life, and the one who received that vow was I.” In Romani’s libretto, in the analogous situation Elvino asks Lisa to for give him for being unfaithful: “[...] Let us renew our former sweet bond; for ever having broken it, forgive a heart seduced by seeming virtue.” The au tonomy of Romani’s writing is evident from the fact that Lisa’s story does not come to a close in his version. Her wedding is cancelled, not just to Elvino whom she desires, but also to Alessio. In Scribe by contrast she is married off by the count to the notary, in d’Artois/Dupin the guileless Le Roux unexpectedly achieves the object of his desires. Without knowledge of the script for the comedy, the disparaging aside the miller Teresa makes in the opera referring to Lisa’s doubts about marrying Alessio makes little sense: The character is presented as a “bogus prude” who outwardly profess es strict moral standards while concealing both her wish to marry (Elvino) and her amorous escapades (with the count). Just two details reveal that Romani must in fact also have had the ballet scenario to hand when adapting the comedy. The bystanders’ invocation at the moment when the sleepwalker is in great peril occurs in the ballet sce nario but not in the comedy, and the words to Lisa’s first aria seem to me to be derived from a phrasing explicit only in the ballet. The foreword to the critical new edition of the score would need to be re vised based on the source text for the libretto. The publisher’s remarks about the stylistic change in register introduced by Romani are naturally still val id, but gain even more validity in the light of the colloquial nuances that the authors of the comedy implemented in the dialogue. Romani however opted for a linguistically sophisticated register, drawing on the great literary tra dition of the Italian pastoral comedy. The fact that his elegant versification did not spurn French classical texts is evidence of the model for the jealousy duet, identified here for the first time, between Elvino and Amina in Act 1 of the opera (“Son geloso del zeffiro errante”). The style of this duet is already suggested in Pierre Corneille’s tragedy-ballet Psyché (1671, a collaboration with Molière, Quinault and Lully).
PSYCHE: Can you be jealous of affection for blood relations? AMOR: I am jealous, Psyche, of all Nature. The sun’s rays kiss you too often, your hair too often accepts the wind’s caresses. As it strokes your hair, I protest! Even the air that you breathe passes over your mouth with too much pleasure. Your dress touches you too closely! 29
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And whenever you sigh I know not what startles me so, perhaps the fear that some of your sighs are for another!
The return of an old master The character of the “new feudal lord”, heralded in the subtitle to the ballet, was subjected by the authors of the opera to a full and momentous revision. Unlike M. Colonel de Saint-Rambert (who as M. Colonel de Rosambert in the comedy remains virtually unchanged), Rodolfo is no longer a young high-ranking officer and regiment commander, but a count, and not only that: he is the long-lost son, now also much older, of the old feudal lord of the village, who died four years previously, as we learn from Teresa. The subtitle of the ballet, The Arrival of a new feudal lord, needed to be changed for the opera to The Return of an old feudal lord. This theme establishes the connection to what was at the time a social problem: the Restoration Period allowed the return of the aristocratic landowners dispossessed and expelled by the French Revolution. This theme saw its most prominent form in Scribe/Boieldieu’s 1825 opéra comique La Dame blanche (The White Lady). This is the story of the return of a likewise unknown heir from an expelled noble family who is able to prevent the family castle from being sold and who with the help of devoted subjects is also ultimately restored to his rank and office. The White Lady is considered an ideological self-affirmation by the advocates of the rights of dynastic succession of the French Bourbon dynasty, the so-called Legitimists. In Romani and Bellini’s Sonnambula, it is only at first glance that we see an uplifting image of Swiss mountain farmers unaffected by time and suf fering. Historical upheavals impinge on this image. The reasons for the sud den disappearance of Rodolfo a generation earlier are also intimated: youth ful love for a girl from the village, whose features remind him of the young bride Amina. All this suggests what is left unspoken in the opera but is ex pressed in Romani’s libretto drafts: the son of the noble family has brought shame on the village by making a young girl pregnant and then leaving her or being sent abroad by his family to “smooth the waves.” His lover bears the child, but then dies “of shame and pain”, it was said. This indirect formula tion leads us to assume that she committed suicide. From the drafts we read that in a comparable situation Amina did more than toy with the idea: “Oh, the only option left for me is to end this unhappy day... Let me die...” Was it this erotic abuse by the young count and its consequences that caused the farmers to rise up against their oppressor? A not impossible in terpretation, if we think for example of the grand opera La Muette de Portici SERGIO MOR A BITO
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(The Mute Girl of Portici, 1828) written at around the same time, in which the sexual assault of a fisher girl by a nobleman triggers a revolution. From Romani’s sketches it follows that Rodolfo knew about his lover’s pregnancy. But he had been “banished by his parents.” Due to the nostalgia that reminiscing about his home and this love prompt, we are inclined to grant him this. He allows himself to be misled by this nostalgia and by the parallel to his mother to do more than just flirt with his own daughter. All the quotations included here are taken from Romani’s draft of a grand recognition scene that was to have occurred in Act 2 after Elvino’s aria during which he wrests his mother’s ring from Amina. In this draft, the ambiguity of Rodolfo’s desire is not resolved but rather potentiated. Be fore he realizes that she is his daughter, Rodolfo suggests to Amina that she would have “better support” from him than from her bridegroom. After the recognition he says of himself: “He [the father] embraces you and in do ing so believes he is embracing the mother.” The publishers of the critical score assume – in line with the statement passed down from Romani’s later wife, Emilia Branca – that it was the awkward momentum generated by this paternity theme that ultimately caused Bellini not to clarify the situation further. However, the shaping of Rodolfo’s role was due to very practical circumstances. Originally expanding the role of the officer was prompted by the desire to create a role matching up to the charisma and calibre of Filippo Galli. The legendary protagonist had sung in numerous Rossini premières and had been hired as “primo basso assoluto” by the Teatro Carcano in Milan, where the première was to take place. Unfortunately, during his first perfor mances of the season it became clear that he was vocally past his prime. The theatre therefore decided to replace him with Luciano Mariani, a promising young singer who had impressed audiences and critics with his appearances in smaller roles. The authors then tried to adjust the role to the character in the source texts. They refrained from explicitly confirming Rodolfo’s pater nity, which left them more latitude for his amorous advances towards both Amina and Lisa, and lessened the importance of the role overall to set it in a balanced relationship to Mariani’s evolutionary possibilities. The Janus-faced Rodolfos in the definitive version – his youthful innoc uousness and his Don-Juan-esque recklessness on the one hand, his pen sive-nostalgic self-withdrawal on the other – are determined primarily this cast changed.
Cloudy patches Despite cutting the planned recognition of father and daughter, Rodolfo’s paternity is so prominently introduced in Act 1 of the opera that its omission 31
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now seems like a conscious and intentional act of concealment. The initially seemingly heterogeneous theme creates a different constellation with the themes adopted from the source material. They are recharged and can be read differently. For one, the appearance of the ghost. Even though Romani borrowed the theme from French vaudeville comedy, his verses are self-con tained. They draw attention due to their linguistic idiosyncrasies. The ap pearance of the somewhat unspecific “fantôm blanc” in the source comedy is demonized in Romani and given distinctly female connotations. Her loo se hair is mentioned, as are her fiery eyes, and at the end the text even men tions a “strige immonda”. The “striga” (Latin strix, striga) is a marsh moth, but also the witch who is further more described here as “impure”. It is the witch who “allows her uncombed hair to flow in the wind” and whose eyes reveal “her peculiar, aggressive sensuousness”. Furthermore, the forbidden female nudity of the “night fliers” is precisely what provokes the ban on loo king (“even dogs cast their eyes down”, “heaven forfend that you should see her”) and which is intended to conceal the veil imagery of the chorus (the “falling [!] white sheet” and the “thick fog” in which she is veiled). We are accustomed to regarding Amina’s nightly sleepwalking as the rea son for this rumour. However, it is strange that Amina herself claims to have seen the ghost. When one considers that in autochthon cultures spirits are always the dead, one might readily assume that in this case it is the revenant of Amina’s unhappy mother (“bianco lenzuol cadente” also means: “falling white shroud”). Ultimately the daughter’s life emulates her mother’s: Amina is left in the lurch by a man whom she loves and who enjoys considerable privilege or wealth. At the beginning of the scene later rejected in which she is identified as Rodolfo’s daughter, Amina was to have said: “No, with this stigma [of infide lity] I shall not return to the village. I shall conceal myself from sight, I want to die alone in some desolate cave where even a sunbeam cannot penetrate.” This may have been the fate of her mother. When outcasts committed sui cide, the community shouldered the blame, and the forbidding apparition reminds them of their guilt, which once again can be taken as a (limited) entitlement to remain in the village. In the duet with chorus “Take this. I give you the ring” the bride and groom sing four verses which have consistently been corrected in the drafts. In the definitive version, they are translated as: “Beloved! Since the day when God united our hearts, my heart has been with you, and yours with me.” It has been noted with surprise and displeasure that this could be a metaphor for the physical union of the lovers. According to official ethics, this can only take place after the wedding. The forced delay in this case is a theme not only in the French versions, but also – in understated form – in the opera. The sleepwalker’s walking along an unsound plank, putting her life in danger, is a test of her innocence. There is express mention of a “misstep”, SERGIO MOR A BITO
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which would result in her plunging down to the mill wheel. The fact that she returns to the ground unharmed is supposed to prove that she has not made any “missteps” in the metaphorical sense. The onlookers’ prayer “Di vine Lord, guide the errant foot” is part of the archaic ceremony of God’s judgement. Although apocryphal, the Infancy Gospel of James (160 A.D.) was influential in respect of mentality and art history and recounts that no lesser than the pregnant Mary had to undergo a similar test of innocence by drinking (poisoned) “bitter waters”.
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Michael Jahn
BELLINI’S OPERAS IN VIENNA
Bellini’s Operas in Vienna Gioachino Rossini, Giovanni Pacini, Saverio Mercadante and Gaetano Doni zetti all visited Vienna: Rossini caused the “Rossini fever” outbreak there in 1822, and as “court composer” appointed by the emperor Gaetano Donizetti directed rehearsals for Bellini’s operas. Bellini himself on the other hand nev er set foot in Vienna. Nevertheless, seven of his ten operas were seen in Vien na. The only exceptions were his early work for the Neapolitan Conservatory Adelson e Salvini (1825), both versions of Bianca e Fernando (1826 and 1828) and Zaira (1829). This last work served as a “musical mine” for other works, first and foremost I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Three of the Viennese premières that took place between 1828 and 1836 were seen at the Theater in der Josefstadt: (Capuleti e Montecchi in 1832, La sonnambula (in German) in 1834, and Beatrice di Tenda (also in German) in 1836. The others took place at the Court Opera at Kärntnertor Theatre, which soon also presented the other works mentioned. MICH A EL JA HN
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Under the management of Domenico Barbaja, besides German operas Ital ian operas were also performed in the original language at the Kärntnertor Theatre. One such opera was Donizetti’s L’ajo nell’imbarazzo, which was premièred there in 1827. On 25 February 1828 Bellini’s Il pirata was present ed and enthusiastically received in the General Musical Gazette: “Wonder ful! Bravo, Maestro! In this review Bellini came across almost as a German composer who was turning into something of a Carl Maria von Weber: He was said to demonstrate a “familiarity with the German school, an apprecia ble conversance with German masculinity, an undeniable fondness for Carl Maria von Weber’s mindset and composition style.” This view of Bellini was common at the time of the première of Norma (1833) but naturally did not fit well with the Rossini fad still prevailing. In spring 1828 alone, Barbiere, Cenerentola, Italiana in Algeri, Donna del lago, and Mosè in Egitto were all performed at the Kärntnertor Theatre. “Bellini knows, loves, honours and diligently studies the classical masters Mozart, Cherubini, Beethoven and Weber” – Cherubini, Salieri (omitted from this list), and Spontini, who was working in Berlin, were all considered to be composers writing in the German style. While the response to La straniera (1831) following its Vienna première was very positive – the remark that the work’s appeal “increased steadily with greater familiarity” should be seen as a compliment – some reservations were expressed in respect of Capuleti (1832). “At all events this music is less sophisticated than the brilliant and tuneful Straniera, and Pirata with its many magnificent effects.” The reviews of Beatrice di Tenda were very negative and of Puritani (1836) even more so. In the latter work, Bellini was said merely to have drawn on his earlier op eras, “in his swansong mental fatigue predominates”, only the duet between the two basses “Suoni la tromba” – described as “almost trivial” – stirred the audience to applaud. A clear dividing line can accordingly be drawn be tween the successes (Pirata, Straniera, Norma) and the failures (Capuleti, Puritani, Beatrice di Tenda), naturally with the qualification that audiences – often correctly – differ in their opinion from the critics. The impression left by the opera under consideration, Sonnambula, is more mixed. Although the first performance was generally ranked in the second category, due partially to the singers’ performances, the work ultimately won favour with Viennese audiences.
Bellini Singers in Vienna Giovanni Battista Rubini created most of the tenor roles in Bellini’s operas and was the star of the performances in Italian at the Kärntnertor Theatre in 1828. These challenging roles were essentially written for him, a fact that must have been obvious to the reviewer of the Pirata performance: This was 35
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immediately clear, because this magnificent singer shines like a star of the first magnitude.” Other singers heard in addition to Rubini were his wife, Adelaide Commelli-Rubini, and the celebrated baritone Antonio Tamburini. The première of La straniera was scheduled to take place two years later, when the dream duo of Giuditta Pasta and Rubini were to be in Vienna. Production of this work failed due to insufficient rehearsal time. As a result the company resorted to Pirata; however Giuditta Pasta moved the grand finale from Straniera to this opera, thereby achieving a resounding success with this scene. In 1831 a German-language version of Straniera was performed at Kärntnertor Theatre. This became a huge success for Marianne Katharina Ernst, who also assumed the title role of Norma in the première (1833) and developed “rare strength and stamina in an extraordinarily chal lenging role”. As was also the case in the world première, Sophie Löwe was cast as Adalgisa; she was later to sing in the world premières of Verdi’s Ernani and Attila (Venice). Löwe also performed Giulietta in Capuleti (1832, in German) at the Kärntnertor Theatre. The theatre experienced problems finding a suitable singer for the demanding role of Tebaldo: It was not until the seventh performance that a singer who perfectly mastered the perils of this role was engaged in the person of the popular tenor Franz Wild. Wild also performed in the early performances of Straniera and Norma. It was not just in Capuleti that the tenor role presented problems; the singer per forming Elvino in the German première of Sonnambula at the Theater in der Josefstadt also struggled with the extreme demands that Bellini made of this voice type. The tenor, who had to “tackle a task set for Rubini but who simply lacked the multifaceted technique for the role” requested to be released imme diately after the unsuccessful première (12 November 1834).
The première of Sonnambula at the Court Opera Louis Antoine Duport, manager of the Kärntnertor Theatre from 1835, pre ferred French opera. The box office hits Robert der Teufel (Meyerbeer), Die Jüdin (Halévy), Zampa (Hérold) and Fra Diavolo (Auber) were premièred during this era. In 1835 the first Italian season was presented and kept strict ly separate from the German season. It included Norma and La straniera in the original language. At the first performance of Sonnambula on 15 May 1835, Viennese-born soprano Amalie Schütz-Oldosi sang the title role. The artist, who had ini tially been engaged by the Theater an der Wien and appeared in Rossini’s Donna del lago at the Kärntnertor Theatre in 1825, was a huge success in
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Italy (La Scala Milan, Teatro San Carlo Napoli), for example in the première of Donizetti’s Il campanello (1836). The tenor Antonio Poggi (Elvino) was heard at La Scala in the première of Donizetti’s Torquato Tasso in 1833 and Verdi’s Giovanni d’Arco in 1845 as well as in the Italian première of Bellini’s Puritani (1835). From 1835 to 1840 he was engaged in Vienna; his voice was not very strong and resonant, but he was described as singing with great agility. Giovanni Orazio Cartagenova, who sang Rodolfo, was nurtured by Saverio Mercadante and created the baritone role in the premières of his operas Gabriella di Vergy (Lisbon) and I Normanni a Parigi (Turin). He also sang in the première of Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda (Venice, 1833). Celebrated singers were cast in the role of Lisa: Giuseppina Strepponi, who later mar ried Giuseppe Verdi, was in the early stages of her career in 1835, but she was nevertheless listed in the programme as “prima donna.” In Norma she appeared alongside Schütz-Oldosi as Adalgisa. The première did not come up to expectations. Although Cartageno va and Poggi were “in their element”, the role of Amina was too high for Schütz-Oldosi and had to be “painstakingly transposed down”, a change that was found to be “disturbing”, particularly in the finale aria. The two manuscripts used for the Italian and German premières at the Kärntner tor Theatre (both manuscripts are preserved in the music collection of the Austrian National Library) contain a duet “Senti tu siccome io sento” be tween Amina and Elvino (possibly by Luigi Ricci, whose opera Un’avventura di Scaramuccia was premièred one month after Sonnambula at the Vienna Opera). Since a reviewer complained that this “charming Act 2 duet act was completely omitted”, it may reasonably be concluded that although the scene was sung at the première, it was cut in the course of the later perfor mances (until 16 June 1835). The duet was inserted after Lisa’s (abridged) aria “De’ lieti auguri a voi son grata”, and in later performance series it was also sung in the first act (in place of the original duet “Son geloso”). At all events, it became one of the most popular pieces in the opera – alongside the cabaletta “Ah non giunge”, Amina’s finale aria. In 1836 when Eugenia Tedolini was singing the role of Amina in Vienna, the “cavatina (!) ‘Senti tu sicomme io sento’, was published in Anton Diabelli’s Collection of most popular songs with piano accompaniment sung by Mme Tadolini in the opera La sonnambula by V. Bellini”. Carl Czerny also composed a rondoletto on the duet “Senti tu sicomme io sento”.
Later performances Sonnambula was received with “thunderous applause that threatened to bring down the house” when Viennese favourite Eugenia Tedolini appeared as Amina in the previously mentioned performance of the 1836 Italian sea 37
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son. After this success, the opera’s place in the repertoire was secure. In 1837 too, the Italian season included Sonnambula (with Fanny TacchinardiPersiani) and in 1838 (again with Tadolini). “Much to the advantage of Mlle Jenny Lutzer” the work was performed in German for the first time on 11 January 1839 (in a translation by Georg Ott). The celebrated prima donna’s collaborators who “almost overshad owed la divina Tadolini” were Mr Schunk as Elvino and Mr Weinkopf as Rodolfo. From this point on, the work was a fixture in the German season (a new production in German was added in 1862), but the opera was also a regular part of the Italian season: Emilie La Grua, Ilma von Mjurska and Adelina Patti (Amina), Alois Ander, Gustav Walter and Georg Müller (El vino), Josef Draxler and Louis von Bignio (Rodolfo) were the most famous performers of the lead roles. On 22 January 1870 Sonnambula was included in the season at the new opera house, where the last performance to be given for some time took place on 19 May 1890 (together with Josef Bayer’s Puppenfee). The work was performed for the last time at the State Opera (at the time “Opera Theatre” in the 1935 Italian season. Two (!) performances of a new production direct ed by Hans Duhan were put on: Giuseppe del Campo conducted, Antonio Righetti sang Rodolfo, Aldo Simone sang Elvino, and the celebrated sopra no Toti Dal Monte appeared as Amina. In the meantime, Sonnambula could also be heard at other theatres in Vienna: Theater an der Wien (1846), The ater am Franz-Josefs-Kai (Treumanntheater, 1863), Komische Oper (Ring theater, 1875) and Theater in der Leopoldstadt (Carltheater, 1883) all inclu ded the work in their repertoire. For the most part, Bellini’s other operas were adopted much earlier from the Vienna Court Opera programme: Il pirata in 1840, La straniera in 1841, Beatrice di Tenda (the only piece never performed in German) in 1846, I puritani in 1853, Capuleti (starting with the Italian première in 1840, often per formed together with the finale of Nicola Vaccai’s opera Giulietta e Romeo, a custom also followed internationally) in 1858. Only Norma was performed until 1927 at the Vienna Opera. In 1977 two operas by the maestro were again under discussion: Norma (in the schedule until 1980) and Capuleti (until 1987); I puritani was added to the repertoire in 1994 and Sonnambula in Bellini Year 2001.
→ KS Natalie Dessay as Amina, 2002 ↓ Next pages: scene
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Imprint Vincenzo Bellini LA SONNAMBULA Season 2023/24 (Première: 19 October 2001) PUBLISHER Wiener Staatsoper GmbH, Opernring 2, 1010 Wien General Director: Dr. Bogdan Roščić Music Director: Philippe Jordan Administrative Director: Dr. Petra Bohuslav General Editor: Sergio Morabito, Andreas Láng, Oliver Láng, based on the premierè-programme 2001 Design & Concept: Fons Hickmann M23, Berlin Layout: Miwa Meusburger Cover image concept: Martin Conrads, Berlin Printed by: Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, Bad Vöslau ARTICLE ORIGINATION Synopsis (from the premierè-programme 2001) Andreas Láng: Interview with Giacomo Sagripanti – Marco Arturo Marelli: Fragile oblivion (from the pre mierè-programme 2001) – Daniela Heisig: Die Anima. Der Archetyp des Lebendigen, Zurich and Dusseldorf, 1996 – Sergio Morabito: Backgrounds to Bellini’s Sonn ambula (from the premierè-programme of the Stuttgart Opera Stuttgart, 2011/12) – Michael Jahn: Bellini’s Operas in Vienna (from the premierè-programme 2001) IMAGES Cover © Jasmin Merdan / Getty Images Page 2, 3, 7, 12, 13, 21, 40, 41 Michael Pöhn / Wiener Staatsoper GmbH Page 5, 25, 38 Axel Zeininger / Wiener Staatsoper GmbH
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