La sonnambula is an opera semiseria in two acts, with music in the bel canto tradition by Vincenzo Bellini set to an Italian libretto by Felice Romani, based on a scenario for a ballet-pantomime written by Eugène Scribe and choreographed by Jean-Pierre Aumer called La somnambule, ou L'arrivée d'un nouveau seigneur. The ballet had premiered in Paris in September 1827 at the height of a fashion for stage works incorporating somnambulism.
The sleepwalker in act 2, sc. 2, (William de Leftwich Dodge, 1899)
Ah! non credea mirarti / Sì presto estinto, o fiore ("I did not believe you would fade so soon, oh flower"). This text from act 2, scene 2, of La sonnambula appears on Bellini's tomb in Catania
Giuditta Pasta as Amina, May 1831 premiere
Tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini sang Elvino
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer, who was known for his long-flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania". Many years later, in 1898, Giuseppe Verdi "praised the broad curves of Bellini's melody: 'there are extremely long melodies as no-one else had ever made before'."
Vincenzo Bellini, portrait by Pietro Lucchini
Bellini's birthplace, the Palazzo Gravina-Cruyllas, Catania, circa 1800
Composer Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli
Adelson e Salvini: autograph of the score
