‘The Sleepwalker’ Vincenzo Bellini’s two-act opera La sonnambula, which had a pastoral background, was first produced at the Teatro Carcano in Milan on 6 March 1831. The story derived from a comédie-vaudeville of 1819 and a ballet-pantomime of 1827, both part-written by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. The title role, Amina, was created by Giuditta Pasta ...
Norma, Bellini’s eighth opera and his masterpiece, followed hard on the heels of his La sonnambula when its first performance was given at La Scala less than four months later, on 26 December 1831. Once again, Giuditta Pasta created the title role, although this time she had parts of the opera transposed down to the key ...
(Ven-chant’-zo Bel-le’-ne) 1801–35 Italian composer One of the most important opera composers of the nineteenth century, Bellini cultivated a bel canto (literally ‘fine singing’) melodic style that influenced not only other opera composers but also Chopin and Robert Schumann. He studied first with his grandfather, composing youthful sacred works, ariettas and instrumental pieces, and in 1819 moved to ...
1801–35, Italian The musical abilities of Vincenzo Bellini were already well known in his home city of Catania in Sicily before he went to Naples at age 18 to study at the conservatory under Zingarelli. A competent pianist at age five, composer of his sacred music at six, the youthful Bellini’s ariettes and instrumental works were performed in ...
(Vin-chant’-zo Ga-le-la’-e) c. 1520–91 Italian theorist and musician The father of Galileo Galilei, Vincenzo, also had a scientific mind. His experience as a lutenist and composer formed the practical basis for a significant body of music theory. His later works, especially, are heavily influenced by contemporary humanist enquiry into the nature of ancient music and, in particular ...
1873–1938, Russian Almost entirely self-taught as a singer, Chaliapin began singing in Tbilisi and St Petersburg. He made a name for himself singing both Boris and Valaam from Modest Mussorgsky’s (1839–81) Boris Godunov (1874). Although best known for singing the Russian repertoire, Chaliapin performed in a wide range of operas, including those by Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) and ...
1770–1827, German Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn to a musical family, on 16 December 1770. He started composing at the age of 11 and experienced opera from the inside when he joined the Bonn court orchestra as a viola player in 1789. His letters reveal that from his early years in Vienna, where he moved in ...
1808–70 Irish composer Balfe was the most successful composer of English operas of the nineteenth century. The Irish-born Balfe made his name as a singer with a fine baritone voice, and sang in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in Paris, as well as taking leading roles in Italy until 1833. His reputation as a composer began in London with ...
Beethoven’s shadow looms large over the Early Romantic period. Many of the age’s most remarkable composers – Schubert, Berlioz, Wagner, Brahms – revered him above all. He had stretched the logic of tonal harmony, weakening its tonic-dominant foundations. In the process, the dramaturgy of the Classical sonata had been altered. Schubert’s Lieder The Romantic imagination was ...
The Romantic period in opera, music, literature and art lasted more than a century overall, from around 1790 – the year after the French Revolution – to 1910, four years before the outbreak of the First World War. In this context, the meaning of ‘romantic’ went far beyond the usual amorous connotations: it stood for the ...
Bel canto – beautiful singing – is a vocal technique that is deliberately designed to sound effortless but is, in reality, extremely difficult to achieve. Although the technique reached full flower in the nineteenth century, especially in the operas of Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35), elements of bel canto style first appeared in the Baroque era, in Venetian opera ...
The Teatro alla Scala – known outside Italy as La Scala, Milan – is one of the world’s most famous opera houses and originally opened in the sixteenth century as the Salone Margherita in the Palazzo Ducale. Both this theatre and another built on its site, the Teatro Regio Ducale, burned down, in 1708 and 1776 respectively. ...
Glinka, the ‘father of Russian music’, was the first composer to forge a distinctively Russian style. Previously, during the reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, music at the Imperial court had been directed by leading Italian opera composers such as Baldassare Galuppi (1706–85), Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816) and Domenico ...
The history of opera is dominated by Italian and Austro-German composers. It is in Italy and Germany that we find the greatest number of opera houses. La Scala in Milan lays claim to be the most famous opera house in the world, and its opening night every season is a major event in the country’s social calendar. The theatre, ...
One of the best-known Renaissance music manuscripts, the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, was compiled by the musician Francis Tregian (1574–1619) during his imprisonment in London for recusancy from 1609 until his death. The manuscript contains an unusually wide-ranging collection of nearly 300 keyboard pieces by English composers (many of them also known for their Catholic sympathies), including Tallis, Byrd ...
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