Vincenzo Bellini - Biography
incenzo Bellini famous composer of Italian Bel Canto opera was born in Cantaia, Sicily on November 3rd 1801and died on September 23 1835 in Paris. He came from a family who had a local reputation as distinguished musicians. Bellini was taught music at an early age by his father and grandfather. The local ducal family in Sicily were impressed by his skill and sent him to Naples under their sponsorship in 1819 where he studied in the Royal College of Music. He received a very thorough education under noted pedagogues such a Furno and Triito. And Conti. He made an exhaustive study of Italian Eighteenth Century Opera under their tutelage. He himself was developing an extraordinary gift for refined melody. While in school he wrote some instrumental and sacred choral music. His first opera appeared in 1825 and was entitled Adelson e Salvini; his second was initially titled Bianco e Giorno appeared in Naples in 1826 but was revised in Bianco e Gernando in 1828. Bellini was commissioned to write a dramatic opera for La Scala that year, the result was Il Pirata the first of his operas to survive as a repertoire work. Its initial success in Milan spread to the Vienna Opera. Bellini produced two operas in 1829 La Staniera for La Scala and Zaira for the Tuscan city of Parma. The Teatro La Fenice in Venice commissioned an opera in 1830 based on Romeo and Juliet, I Capuleti I Montechi (this opera has a female Romeo) that achieved considerable success. The following year he wrote an opera that has a happy ending for La Scala La Sonnumbala. The plot concerns a sleepwalking young lady who wanders into the bedroom of a nobleman, incurring the wrath of her suitor all turns out alright when he discovers she is a sleepwalker (somnambulist). This was the first of his opera written for Giuditta Pasta the Maria Callas of her day. The following year for La Scala he wrote his most famous work Norma written again for Pasta. This opera concerns the love for a Druid Priestess for a Roman that leads to her self- immolation in a funeral pyre. This opera was considered Callas’s signature role and is the ultimate test for sopranos in Italian opera.
This blistering pace was putting stress on Bellini’s less than robust health and he was to write his first failure Beatice di Tenda composed for the Fenice in Venice in 1833 ( hough it now ranks among his second tier successes) . Bellini now often travelled to supervise productions of his operas in London and Paris. Chopin then in his mid twenties became entranced with his music and its flow of beautiful melodies it seemingly had an influence on his more lyrical music like the Nocturnes. He wrote for the opera in Paris what was destined to be his final work I Puritani. The work had a gala premiere with some of the greatest singers of the age the tenor Rubini, the soprano Grisi and the bass Lablache. Bellini’s life was cut down short of his 34th birthday just outside of Paris when he came down with an intestinal infection which there was no cure for at the time.
Bellini was a major force in opera through the first half of the Nineteenth Century but later on outside of Italy was thought old fashioned in comparison to the more dramatic Verdi and the overpowering influence of Wagner(surprisingly Wagner who normally detested Italian music was a great admirer of Bellini). This changed dramatically in the 1950’s after Maria Callas took up the great Bellini soprano roles Through her recordings and performances of these works in the great opera houses of the world they would again become part of the standard repertoire . In succeeding years the operas were brilliantly sung by sopranos Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballe and Beverly Sills while the tenor roles were brilliantly sung by Luciano Pavarotti. Bellini is also one of the great ‘what if’s’ in musical history dying at so early an age just as he was entering his prime.
