Vincenzo Bellini
“Opera must make people weep, shudder, and die through singing.” — letter to Carlo Pepoli (1834)
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people around him ⏳🌊
- FamilyVincenzo Tobia Bellini
His grandfather and namesake, who taught the boy the rudiments of composition in Catania as his first teacher.
- TeacherNiccolò Zingarelli
Director of the Naples Conservatory, he taught Bellini to write melody that sings rather than ornaments, laying the foundation of Bellini's music.
- FriendshipFrancesco Florimo
A conservatory classmate and lifelong friend, he both guarded and polished Bellini's letters and memory after the composer's death.
- FriendshipFelice Romani
A partner who wrote seven librettos, from Il pirata to Beatrice di Tenda, until a public quarrel in 1833 drove them apart.
- RivalryGaetano Donizetti
A contemporary who competed with him in Milan and Paris for the same seasons and the same singers, and of whom Bellini was always wary.
- PatronageGioachino Rossini
The elder master who ruled the theaters in Bellini's Naples years, and who in Paris advised him on I puritani and looked after him.
I. Catania's eldest son · 1801–1819 (age 0–18)
(Birth) In November 1801 he was born in Catania, in the Kingdom of Sicily (today Italy). The date was November 3. His father, Rosario Bellini, was a musician who played the organ and taught music, moving between churches and noble households; his mother was Agata Ferlito. Bellini was the eldest of seven children, and his younger brother Carmelo would later also follow the path of a composer. (Grandfather) His first music teacher was his grandfather and namesake, Vincenzo Tobia Bellini. A native of the Abruzzo in central Italy, he had studied in Naples before settling in Catania, and he taught his grandson the rudiments of harmony and counterpoint. At his grandfather's side the boy wrote masses and sacred songs for the church, and short songs to be sung in aristocratic salons. Many anecdotes tell of him composing at a very young age, but most rest on recollections left by family and acquaintances after his death, and are hard to take at face value. (Scholarship) The family was not well off. Nor did making a name in a provincial town open the way to becoming an opera composer. In 1819 the Catania city authorities agreed to grant him a scholarship of several years to study at the Naples conservatory. At seventeen, Bellini left home. The awareness that he was studying on his hometown's money stayed with him a long time; even after his success he often worried about how Catania would regard him.
II. A student in Naples · 1819–1827 (age 18–26)
(Conservatory) The school Bellini entered was the Royal Conservatory of San Sebastiano in Naples. After laying his foundations with Giovanni Furno and Giacomo Tritto, he studied under the director, Niccolò Zingarelli. Zingarelli clung to the tradition of the old Neapolitan school descending from Pergolesi, and told his students again and again to write melodies that sing rather than showy ornament. In the oboe concerto he wrote at this time, the solo instrument already sings with a singer's long breath. (Rossini) Yet the theaters of Naples at the time belonged to Rossini. At the Teatro San Carlo, run by the impresario Domenico Barbaja, Rossini's operas went up one after another, and the students grew up listening to that music despite the director's disapproving gaze. Bellini did not simply follow Rossini's brilliance; he filtered out only that theatrical instinct and absorbed it in his own way. (Friendship) At the conservatory he met his lifelong friend Francesco Florimo. Florimo, who later became the conservatory's librarian, was the one to whom Bellini wrote his most candid letters. (Love) In his Naples years Bellini fell in love with Maddalena Fumaroli, a judge's daughter. Her father is said to have refused the marriage, declaring that he could not give his daughter to a musician without a settled position. (Debut) In 1825 he staged his first opera, Adelson e Salvini, as a student production, and the following year presented Bianca e Gernando at the Teatro San Carlo. The original name ‘Fernando’ was changed because it coincided with that of King Ferdinando. Seeing this success, Barbaja arranged for him to write a new work for La Scala in Milan.
A work from his student years under Zingarelli, when he was learning to write melodies that sing. It shows that even before he became an opera composer, he was making instruments sing arias.
- The brief, vigorous orchestral introduction at the opening (maestoso, 'majestically') sets the mood like the moment before an opera curtain rises.
- In the slow section (larghetto cantabile, 'rather slowly, in a singing manner'), the oboe sings a long-breathed melody like a soprano. Listen, too, to how simply the accompaniment stays in the background.
- The fast final section moves lightly on the rhythm of a Polish dance (polacca), and the oboe shows off its ornamental virtuosity, rolling through rapid notes.
- At little more than 10 minutes, it is a favorite in the oboist's repertoire, and the places where the slow section breathes sound different in every performance.
III. A new name at La Scala · 1827–1830 (age 26–29)
(Success) Il pirata, premiered at La Scala in October 1827, made the twenty-five-year-old composer known across Italy at a stroke. The libretto was by Felice Romani, the foremost librettist of the day. Bellini asked the tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini to sing with feeling in the words rather than show off his technique, and as a result the audience heard the character's anguish before the ornament. (Romani) Afterward he worked with Romani on La straniera, Zaira, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La sonnambula, Norma and Beatrice di Tenda. Bellini asked for verses to be rewritten again and again, and would not back down until word and melody fused as one. (Lover) In 1828 in Genoa he met Giuditta Turina, the wife of a silk merchant. Their affair lasted several years and was an open secret in Milanese society. (Fees) He wrote barely one opera a year, demanding high fees in exchange. This stood in contrast to Donizetti, who at the same time was writing three or four a year. His dogged haggling with impresarios over sums was of a piece with his way of lavishing care on each work. (Reuse) Zaira, staged in Parma in 1829, failed. When he was hastily commissioned for a new work at La Fenice in Venice the following year, he completed I Capuleti e i Montecchi in about 6 weeks, carrying over much of the music of Zaira. The melodies of the failure came alive in the new drama and won a great success. That year in Milan he suffered a severe gastric illness, the first warning of the digestive ailment that would follow him all his life.
His La Scala debut and breakthrough, in which Bellini's approach to song, asking Rubini for feeling over virtuosity, first emerged in full.
- In Act 1, the hero Gualtiero's “Nel furor delle tempeste” is an aria written for Rubini in a very high range, in which the fury of the sea storm and the character's rage are heard as one.
- Before Imogene's mad scene (a scene sung by a character whose mind has come undone) at the end of Act 2, the English horn (a woodwind pitched lower than the oboe) first voices her wavering heart in a long solo.
- “Col sorriso d'innocenza” is slow and dreamlike, then bursts, in the “O sole, ti vela” that follows, into a fast, fierce cabaletta (the quick closing section of an aria).
- Maria Callas's live recordings from the 1950s are often cited as the classic performances of this scene, and they helped bring this long-forgotten opera back to the stage.
A work that rewove, in 6 weeks, melodies from the failed Zaira and his student opera into a new drama. Music he refused to discard was reborn as the love of Romeo and Juliet.
- Romeo is a trouser role, sung by a mezzo-soprano in men's clothing; in the duet with Giulietta, the two female voices overlap to create a distinctive color.
- Before Giulietta's “Oh! quante volte” in Act 1, a solo horn gently opens the way. This melody was carried over from his student opera Adelson e Salvini.
- Romeo's entrance aria moves from a slow section into a fast cabaletta, “La tremenda ultrice spada,” revealing his resolve.
- The final tomb scene unfolds like a dialogue of short, broken exchanges. In the 19th century singers customarily replaced this scene with Nicola Vaccai's setting, and the difference is still debated among aficionados.
IV. The year of two masterpieces · 1831–1832 (age 30–31)
(Rivalry) For the 1830–31 season, Milan's Teatro Carcano commissioned new works from two composers for the same singers, namely the soprano Giuditta Pasta and Rubini. When Donizetti's Anna Bolena, which came first, was a great success, Bellini grew tense. His letters from this period often show wariness and suspicion toward rivals such as Donizetti and Giovanni Pacini. (Censorship) He had originally meant to turn Victor Hugo's Hernani into an opera, but gave it up, fearing its political content would run afoul of the censors. What he chose instead was a pastoral about a sleepwalking girl in a Swiss mountain village. La sonnambula, premiered in March 1831, was quiet, transparent music, the very opposite of the heat of the rivalry. (Norma) On December 26 of the same year, Norma premiered at La Scala. It told of a Gaulish priestess who has secretly borne two children to the Roman proconsul, suffers betrayal, and in the end goes to the pyre of her own accord. Pasta sang Norma and Giulia Grisi Adalgisa. The opening-night response was lukewarm, and Bellini wrote of his disappointment to Florimo, but as performances went on the work became his signature piece. He is said to have cherished it above all his other works. (Homecoming) In the spring of 1832 he traveled by way of Naples to Sicily. It was his first return home in thirteen years. Catania and Palermo gave him a lavish welcome, and he saw his parents and siblings for the first time in a long while.
A mountain-village pastoral he chose after the censors made him abandon a political drama, in a season when the rivalry with Donizetti was heating up. The result, the very opposite of that heat, was his most transparent and quiet music.
- In the final scene, in “Ah! non credea mirarti,” Amina, still asleep, speaks to a withered flower. The accompaniment all but holds its breath, and the melody alone spins out at length.
- Once she wakes and the misunderstanding is cleared up, her joy bursts out at once in “Ah! non giunge,” a fast, brilliant cabaletta. Listen for the contrast between slow sorrow and swift elation.
- The role of Elvino was written for Rubini and demands extremely high notes from the tenor; even today few tenors can take it on.
- Recordings by Callas and Joan Sutherland are often compared. Many say one puts the expression of the words first, the other the even beauty of the voice.
The second masterpiece to follow in the same year, it overcame a cool opening-night reception to become the work Bellini cherished most. It carries a tragedy of betrayal and sacrifice on a single long line of melody.
- “Casta diva” is Norma's prayer to the moon goddess for peace, following a long flute introduction. Bellini first wrote it in G major, then lowered it to F major for Pasta, who sang the premiere.
- In the Act 2 duet “Mira, o Norma,” the two sopranos move side by side in parallel thirds (three notes apart), blending like a single voice.
- In the final scene, “Qual cor tradisti” leads into “Deh! non volerli vittime,” as chorus and soloists build a great wave that keeps swelling (crescendo).
- The role of Norma is notoriously difficult; the Wagnerian singer Lilli Lehmann is said to have remarked that singing all three Brünnhildes was easier than a single Norma.
V. The year of parting · 1833 (age 32)
(Venice) In 1833 a commission from La Fenice led him to write “Beatrice di Tenda.” But Romani, who had taken on work for several theaters at once, was badly late with the libretto. Desperate, Bellini went so far as to appeal to the authorities, and the rushed work failed at its March premiere. A war of words followed in the Venetian press, with articles defending Bellini and rebuttals from Romani, and a collaboration of six years ended there. (Parting) That same year Giuditta Turina's husband discovered the pair's letters, and the couple separated. Bellini would not take on the responsibility of a life with her. In a letter to a friend he wrote as though the affair were getting in the way of his work, and gradually he kept his distance. It is a passage that reveals a man who longed to be loved yet feared being tied down. (London) In April he crossed to London with Pasta to oversee performances of “Norma” and “La sonnambula.” There, records show, he heard Maria Malibran sing Amina in English and was deeply moved. In August he arrived in Paris. The city where he had meant only to stop briefly became his final home. Having lost his Italian theaters and his librettist, he had to begin again on a larger stage.
VI. Last songs in Paris · 1833–1835 (age 32–34)
(Salon) In Paris he frequented the salon of the exiled Italian noblewoman Princess Belgiojoso, where he grew close to the poet Heinrich Heine and to Frédéric Chopin. The reading that hears Bellini's trace in the long, singing lines of Chopin's nocturnes is widely accepted. Heine recorded that when he joked that geniuses die young, Bellini recoiled in horror and made a sign to ward off the evil eye. (Rossini) The retired Rossini was generous with his advice. When the Théâtre-Italien commissioned a new work from Bellini and in the same season entrusted “Marino Faliero” to Donizetti, Bellini wrote letters suspecting a plot to keep him in check. (I puritani) The libretto fell to Carlo Pepoli, an exiled poet with no experience as a dramatist, and Bellini wrote him letter after letter teaching him what a music drama ought to be. “I puritani,” premiered on January 24, 1835, with Grisi, Rubini, Antonio Tamburini and Luigi Lablache, was a triumph, and he was awarded the Légion d'honneur. Around this time, in a letter to his maternal uncle, he confided that he hoped to marry a woman of means and settle his life. (Death) That summer, staying at an acquaintance's house in Puteaux outside Paris, he fell gravely ill and, almost entirely cut off from the outside world, died on September 23 at the age of thirty-three. Rumors of poisoning led to an autopsy, which found severe inflammation of the intestines and an abscess of the liver; today the cause is believed to have been amoebic dysentery. Rossini was among the mourners at the funeral, and Bellini was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, then moved in 1876 to Catania Cathedral.
His last success, won after he had lost his Italian stage and librettist and started over in Paris. Eight months after the premiere, he was dead.
- Elvira's mad scene, “Qui la voce,” is a slow song in which the deranged heroine calls to her lover, paired with the cabaletta that follows, “Vien, diletto.”
- After Arturo's entrance song, “A te, o cara,” the Act 3 “Credeasi, misera” demands a high F from the tenor. So far above the high C usually considered the tenor's top note, it is often sung with falsetto mixed in or transposed down.
- “Suoni la tromba,” the duet in which baritone and bass cry out for liberty, has the drive of a march. Later six composers, among them Liszt and Chopin, built the variation set “Hexaméron” on its melody.
- The four principals of the premiere were so famous they were called the ‘Puritani Quartet.’ In the ensembles where all four come together, listen to how each voice moves apart and together.
Lesser-known stories
(Editing) Much of the Bellini we know today comes from the memoir and collection of letters his friend Florimo published in the 1880s. When scholars in the late 20th century checked them against the autograph originals, evidence emerged that Florimo had deleted or altered barbs aimed at rivals and coldly calculating remarks about romance, and had written some sentences himself. The image of a pure-hearted young artist, and the doomed romance with Maddalena Fumaroli, are likewise seen as largely his embellishments. Recent biographers such as John Rosselli read these sources with caution. (Wagner) Wagner, later notorious for disparaging Italian opera, admired Bellini in his youth. Conducting “Norma” in Riga in 1837, he wrote in defense of the power of its simple melodies, and in Paris in 1839 he tried to compose a new aria for Oroveso for the bass Lablache, though it was never used. It is an episode seldom mentioned, overshadowed by Wagner's later fame. (Recycling) Bellini did not throw away his failures. Much of “Zaira” was carried over into “I Capuleti e i Montecchi,” and the melody of Giulietta's aria came from “Adelson e Salvini,” written in his student days. It is proof that even for a composer who insisted on one opera a year, time was always short. (Verdi) In 1898, after the verdict that Bellini's orchestration was thin had hardened, the aged Verdi wrote in a letter that Bellini had written ‘long, long, long melodies’ such as no one before him had written. This testimony from a younger composer who set out from the same tradition is often cited as grounds for reading Bellini anew.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Bel canto
(Meaning) The Italian bel canto means beautiful (bel) singing (canto). (In music) A style of singing developed in early 19th-century Italian opera, prizing an even, smooth tone, long breath, and the technique to execute rapid ornaments cleanly. Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini are its leading composers. Rather than pushing with sheer volume, it is closer to reading a long sentence on a single breath, from start to finish, in one even voice. Think back to reciting a long poem in class, clearly and without pausing for breath partway through.
Libretto (script)
(Meaning) The Italian libretto is libro (book) with a suffix meaning ‘small,’ hence ‘little book.’ The name comes from the slim booklets of words that audiences in old theaters held in their hands. (In music) It refers to the text setting down an opera's story and words, and the person who writes it is called a librettist. Because the composer fits melodies to the verses of the libretto, the rapport with the librettist decides a work's success or failure. It is like a school play: if the script comes late, rehearsals and songs all fall behind. Bellini's undoing while he waited on Romani's libretto was exactly such a case.
Aria
(Meaning) The Italian aria originally means ‘air’ or ‘atmosphere,’ and from that came the sense of ‘tune.’ (In music) A song in an opera in which a single character pours out feeling alone. The story pauses for a moment, and the character's inner self is shown as if magnified. It is like a film scene where the camera closes in on the protagonist's face, the score rises, and their inner thoughts spill out. (Elsewhere) In everyday Italian, aria simply means the ‘air’ we breathe.
Recitative
(Meaning) From the Italian recitare (to recite, to act): a song delivered as if spoken. (In music) The passages in an opera where dialogue is exchanged or the plot moves forward, sung quickly in a kind of chant that follows the rhythm of speech. The accompaniment often just touches in the chords. Picture actors in a musical explaining the situation in a manner halfway between song and speech before the real number begins. Even here, Bellini strove to keep the melody expressive.
Cabaletta
(In music) In 19th-century Italian opera an aria was often built from a slow, lyrical first part and a fast, brilliant second part, and this second part is called the cabaletta. When a character who has laid bare deep feeling in the first part reaches a decision, or bursts into joy·anger, the music moves into the cabaletta, and the same melody is often sung twice, with more brilliant ornaments added the second time. It is like the anchor of a relay who takes the baton and sprints flat out to finish the race. It is also where the audience's applause erupts loudest.
Mad scene
(Meaning) A Korean rendering of the Italian scena della pazzia, that is, ‘mad scene.’ (In music) A long scene sung by a character, usually the heroine, whose mind has been unhinged by unbearable grief or betrayal, drifting between reality and fantasy. The melody breaks off suddenly and resumes, tunes heard earlier resurface like fragments, and the voice must negotiate very high, difficult ornaments. Think of it as the jumble of old memories that surfaces in a dream, set to music. Famous examples include Bellini's “Il pirata” and “I puritani” and Donizetti's “Lucia di Lammermoor.”
Trouser role
(Meaning) From the English trouser role, a ‘role played in trousers.’ The term comes from women singers taking the stage in men's clothes. (In music) A male character sung by a female singer, usually a mezzo-soprano. Often used to portray boys or young lovers, it gives even a love song between a man and a woman the distinctive sound of two women's voices intertwined. It is like a girl taking the prince's part in a school play and carrying it off splendidly. Romeo in Bellini's “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” was written this way.