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Home , Adelson e Salvini, Beatrice di Tenda, Domenico Gilardoni, Giovanni Battista Rubini, I puritani, La sonnambula

la cultura italiana

Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835) This month’s essay is about an Italian composer from who was known primarily for his long-flowing melodic lines that garnered for him the sobriquet “The Swan of .” He was the quintessential composer of opera. He became a master of the varied possibilities of the human voice, teasing out the proficiencies for vocal production. In so doing, he created a novel art which culminated in the Bel Canto style. He saw a dual purpose for vocal works: first, for the development of the aria and vocal piece within the opera or context of the song, and second, for the wider context of presenting that opera or musical drama as a symbol of the beauty of human accomplishment within the arts. Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was born in Catania, Sicily, on November 3, 1801, the son of Rosario Bellini and Agata Ferlito Bellini. He was the eldest of his parents’ seven children. He was blond and blue-eyed, unusual for a Sicilian, a throw-back to his ancestors’ roots in central Italy. He was a child prodigy from a highly musical family. His grandfather, Vincenzo Tobia Bellini, had studied at the conservatory in and, in Catania from 1767, had been an organist and teacher, as had Vincenzo’s father, Rosario. Both were also composers of note. An anonymous 12-page hand-written history, held in Catania’s Museo Belliniano, states that Bellini could sing an air of the Italian composer, Valentino Fioravanti, at 18 months, that he began studying music theory at age two, the piano at three, and by the age of five could, apparently, play very well. The document states that Bellini’s first five pieces were composed when he was just six years old, and “at seven he was taught Latin, modern languages, rhetoric, and philosophy.” Bellini’s biographer Herbert Weinstock regards some of these accounts as no more than myths, not being supported from other, more reliable sources. Additionally, he makes the point in regard to Bellini’s apparent knowledge of languages and philosophy: “Bellini never became a well- educated man.” Regardless of whether or not all these claims are true, it is certain that Bellini’s future career as a musician was never in doubt. Bellini’s early education was at home—his teachers were primarily priests, brought by the family to educate the young man. In 1816, at the age of 15, Bellini began living with his grandfather, from whom he received his first formal music lessons. Soon after, he began to write more serious and complex compositions, among them the nine Versetti da Cantarsi il Venerdi Santo (Verses to Sing on Good Friday), eight of which were based on texts by the 18th Century Italian poet and librettist, Pietro Metastasio. By 1818, he had completed several additional orchestral pieces, which quickly gained broad approval in Catania, and at least two settings of the Mass Ordinary: one in D Major, the other in G Major (both of these survive and have been commercially recorded).

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Bellini’s birthplace, the Palazzo dei Gravina Gruyas, Catania, circa 1800

Also, by 1818, he was ready for further studies, which for well-off students would include moving to Naples. Bellini’s family was not wealthy enough to support such a lifestyle. However, his growing reputation in and around Catania could not be overlooked. His break came when Stefano Notabartolo, the Duca di San Martino e Montalbo, became the new intendente (main administrative officer) of the province of Catania. He and his wife encouraged the young Bellini to petition the city fathers for a stipend to support him during his musical studies. In May, 1819 he was unanimously awarded a four-year pension to allow him to study at the Real Collegio di Musica di San Sebastiano in Naples. In July, he left Catania carrying letters of introduction from Notabartolo to several powerful persons, including Giovanni Carafa who was the intendente of the Real Collegio as well as the person in charge of the royal theaters in Naples. Bellini was to live in Naples for the following eight years. Although he started off in elementary classes, he progressed rapidly and was granted free tuition by 1820. By 1822, he was in the class of the artistic director and headmaster of the school, the opera composer Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli, studying the masters of the Neapolitan school and the orchestral works of Haydn and Mozart. (Zingarelli appears to have recognized Bellini’s potential and treated him like a son). Zingarelli detested the brilliant reigning composer of the moment, Rossini, and wanted to return to the plainer style of the past, with emotions of gentle and dignified pathos. He pushed Bellini in this direction and emphasized to him that a composition must “sing” if it was to touch the heart and move the audience. One can see Bellini’s acceptance of his master’s approach in several sacred works and small instrumental pieces that he was required to compose at the school. (However, it is in his most famous operatic works where one can really see his acceptance and full creative development of Zingarelli’s guiding ideas). By 1824, he had become a primo maestrino (first teacher, i.e. tutor) to entering students.

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Early and International Fame It was the custom at the Conservatory to introduce a promising student to the public with a dramatic work. The result of this was Bellini’s first opera , which was an opera semiseria (semi-serious opera, i.e. serious but with a happy ending) chosen by the conservatory’s students to be performed in the Conservatory’s theater by an all-male cast made up of students. After its initial performance in February, 1825, it proved to be so popular that the student body demanded it be performed every Sunday for an entire year. Adelson e Salvini was never performed outside of the Conservatory, but it did, however, serve as a source of material for at least five other operas Bellini composed. In the summer or early autumn of 1825 Bellini began work on what was to become his first professionally produced opera. A contract between the Conservatory and the royal theaters in Naples obliged the Conservatory—when it nominated a sufficiently talented student—to require that student to write a cantata or one-act opera to be presented on a gala evening in one of the theaters. After Zingarelli (left) used his influence to secure this honor for his promising student, Bellini was able to obtain agreement that he could write a full-length opera and, furthermore, that the did not have to be written by Tottola, who was the theater’s official dramatic poet. Instead, Bellini chose Domenico Gilardoni, a young writer who then prepared his first libretto, which he namedBianca e Fernando, based on an 1820 play, Bianca e Fernando alla Tomba di Carlo IV, Duca d’Agrigento (Bianca and Fernando at the Tomb of Charles IV, Duke of Agrigento) and set in Sicily. However, the title Bianca e Fernando had to be changed since “Ferdinando” was the name of the heir to the throne, and no form of it could be used on a royal stage. After some delays caused by King Francesco I forcing postponement, the opera—now named Bianca e Gernando—was given its premiere performance at the on May 30, 1826 (the feast day of St. Ferdinand, the namesake of Prince Ferdinando). This second opera was very successful, helped by the approval of the King, and Bellini’s music was highly regarded. Donizetti, who attended the premiere, enthusiastically wrote afterward to the opera composer, Giovanni Simone Mayr: “It is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, especially as it is his first opera.” Within nine months of the success of Bianca, in February/March 1827, Domenico Barbaja offered Bellini another commission, this time for an opera to be presented in the autumn of 1827 at in , which Barbaja was also part of the management at the time. Bellini spent 1827 to 1833 mostly in Milan, never holding any official position with an opera company and living solely on the income produced from his compositions, for which he was

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able to ask higher than usual fees. It was at this time that he composed his third opera— (The Pirate, 1827), which was the result of Barbaja’s new commission. Bellini’s collaborator, the poet (right), wrote the libretto. This led to the longterm friendship and collaboration between Bellini and Romani that would produce some of Bellini’s most important and popular operas. (Il Pirata also cemented Bellini’s friendship with his favorite , , who had sung in Bianca e Gernando). The premiere of Il Pirata on October 27, 1827, at La Scala in Milan, established Bellini as an internationally acclaimed opera composer.

Operas Following Bellini’s International Notoriety Bellini spent the next years, 1827–1833 in Milan, where all doors were open to him. As Bellini gained experience and recognition, he settled into a working method that stressed quality instead of quantity. He composed fewer operas, for which he commanded higher prices. Supported solely by his opera commissions, he produced (The Foreigner, 1828), which was even more successful than Il Pirata. This opera sparked controversy in the press for its new style and its restless harmonic shifts into remote keys, something different and experimental that the public loved. His success began to be reflected in his lifestyle and showed that he was not immune to the pressures of producing operas to maintain that lifestyle. He began to show the taste for the social life and the dandyism that Heinrich Heine emphasized in his biography of Bellini— Florentinische Nächte (Florentine Nights, 1837). One example showing that he was not immune to the pressures of producing operas to maintain this opulent lifestyle: opening a new theater, Teatro Ducale, in Parma, his (1829) was a failure both with the public and with the critics and was never produced again. This failure showed that he had haphazardly rushed the opera to final production without the proper care he usually gave to composition and production, counting on his notoriety to win over his audience, which in this case he failed to do. However, having learned his lesson, he rebounded the following year with (The Capulets and the Montagues, 1830), based on the same Italian sources as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It premiered on March 11, 1830 in Venice’s Teatro and was an instant critical and popular hit.

Last Operas The year 1831 proved most successful for Bellini as two of his most famous operas were produced. (The Sleepwalker) premiered on March 6, 1831 at Milan’s Teatro

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Carcano, and , premiered on December 26, 1831 at the same theater. La Sonnambula was an opera semiseria; it became very popular, even in England, where an English version appeared and was very well-received. Although Norma was unenthusiastically received at the time, many critics and Bellini himself believed it to be his finest work. It is a tragedy that is set in ancient Gaul; its beautiful aria “Casta diva” became one of the stalwarts of the classical vocal repertory. (Here is Renée Fleming singing this aria.) These two operas were followed by a less successful opera, , which premiered at La Fenice in Venice, on March 16, 1833, a month later than scheduled. The delay led to the falling out between Bellini and Romani, presumably sfogato due to the failure of Romani to deliver the libretto in a timely sang the title role Amina in fashion to Bellini, thus ultimately causing the delay of the La Sonnambula in 1834 premiere and the resulting strong reaction of the critics and public. They never collaborated again. (There appears to have been an attempt on the part of both men, through letters and intermediaries, to repair the friendship and to re-establish a working relationship several years after the break, but Bellini’s death prevented either from ever meeting together again.) Bellini spent a short time during the summer of 1833 in London, directing performances of his operas. He then moved to Paris hoping to write for the Paris Opera and to find a wife. He did neither. Instead, he had huge success with the Theatre-Italien. After he consulted with Rosetti, who was the artistic guide for that company, and after hearing the new symphonies (Beethoven’s Pastoral was a special favorite), he composed and produced his last opera, (The Puritans), which premiered on January 24, 1835. The libretto for this particular opera was written by the exiled Italian poet Count , and was not very good. Bellini’s music, however, was superb and pointed in new directions that his future operas might explore. Unlike his previous two operas, I Puritani was enthusiastically received, and was especially championed by Queen Victoria who admired it.

Death Bellini died, at the age of 33, on September 23, 1835 in Puteaux, a quiet suburb near Paris where he lived and did his compositional work. He had been ill for several years, even though he was able to function without showing outward signs of his illness. Ultimately, he succumbed to an acute inflammation of the colon, which was compounded by an abscess in his liver. The inflammation of the intestine had produced violent symptoms of dysentery during the later years of his life.

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Immediately taking charge of the funeral arrangements, Rossini began to plan Bellini’s funeral and entombment, as well as taking care of his estate. Initially, Rossini regarded burial in Père Lachaise cemetery as a short-term arrangement, not knowing where the final resting place would eventually be. He created a committee of Parisian musicians in order to fund a monument to Bellini that was eventually built at the cemetery. In addition, he arranged for a funeral Mass to be celebrated on October 2, 1835 in the chapel of the Hôtel des Invalides. Of the many tributes that poured in following Bellini’s death, one stands out. It was written by his ex-librettist for so many of his operas and his friend, Felice Romani, and published in Turin on October 1, 1835. In it, Romani described his friendship thus: …Perhaps no composers other than ours know as well as Bellini the necessity for a close union of music with poetry, dramatic truth, the language of emotions, the proof of expression…I sweated for fifteen years to find a Bellini! A single day took him from me!

Despite attempts over many years to have Bellini’s remains transferred to Catania, they were eventually moved in 1876 when his casket containing the remains was taken with great ceremony to the cathedral in Catania and reburied there (left). His memorabilia and scores are preserved in the Museo Belliniano, located in the Gravina Cruyllas Palace in Catania. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was commemorated on the front of the Banca d’Italia 5,000 lire banknote, with a scene from his opera Norma depicted on the back. [These notes went out of circulation when Italy discontinued the use of the lira and adopted the euro as its single currency on February 28, 2002.]

Photo by Berthold Werner

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Legacy and Analysis ’s fame was closely bound up with the Bel Canto style of the great singers of his day. He was not a reformer; his ideals were those of Haydn and Mozart. He strove for clarity, elegance of form and melody, and a close union between words and music. With perseverance, he corrected some of the grosser abuses of the opera of his day. While he subordinated the orchestra accompaniment to the singers and placed upon their voices the responsibility for dramatic expression (as his master teacher, Zingarelli, had taught him at the Conservatory in Naples), his harmony was more enterprising than that of his contemporary . Although his handling of the orchestra in introductions and interludes was far from perfunctory, it is for the individual charm and elegance of his luminous vocal melody that Bellini is remembered. Donizetti had been influenced by Rossini and Rossini also gave Bellini some of his inspiration. However, Bellini did not have the natural fluidity of composition that caused these two composers to dash off operas in weeks or even days in order to meet deadlines. Bellini worked much slower, revising again and again for perfection; an opera per year was his pace. From age 24 through his death some ten years later, Bellini composed eleven operas, more than half of which were quite remarkable. This poses the question, of course, as to how great his music could have been had he lived on. We will never know the answer to that question since he left us at such a young artistic age. However, what we do have indicates that in the Bel Canto style, his unique gift for melody made him the purest and most sustained melodic composer of this genre.

Adapted by James J. Boitano, PhD from: Encyclopedia Britannica website; Famous People website; Lundgren, Bruce. “Vincenzo Bellini Biography.” All Music website; New World Encyclopedia website; and Wikipedia.

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