If Rossini was the presiding genius of Italian bel canto opera in the first half of the 19th century, Donizetti and Bellini were his two lieutenants, and like Rossini, they made their mark in Naples before moving on to Paris, which was the centre of the operatic world. Bellini was Sicilian by birth and showed an early gift for melody that got him noticed while he was still a student. His first full-length opera was staged at Naples’ Teatro San Carlo when he was twenty-three and a commission from Milan followed immediately, spreading his fame beyond Italy. From then on came a steady flow of work, totalling ten operas in ten years – frantic productivity by modern standards but fairly modest by the standards of the time. In fact, Bellini took uncommon care over his work, suiting the music to specific voices (from which he nonetheless made great demands) and developing a close association with the poet Felice Romani, which became one of the most effective composer/librettist partnerships in opera history.

Norma

FORM: Opera in two acts; in Italian

COMPOSER: Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35)

LIBRETTO: Felice Romani; after Alexandre Soumet’s verse tragedy

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Milan, 26 December 1831

Principal Characters

Oroveso, chief of the druids and Norma’s father Bass

Pollione, Roman pro-consul in Gaul Tenor

Norma, high priestess of the druid temple Soprano

Adalgisa, young priestess of the temple Soprano

Clotilde, Norma’s confidante Mezzo-soprano

Flavio, Pollione’s friend Tenor

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: Gaul; the Roman occupation

ACT I Oroveso comes to the sacred grove to pray to the gods to help him raise support to fight and defeat the Romans. After he has left, Pollione confides to Flavio that he no longer loves Norma, who has broken her vows of chastity for him and secretly borne his two children; he has transferred his affections to the young priestess, Adalgisa. When Adalgisa joins him, Pollione successfully persuades her to renounce her vows and go back to Rome with him. Adalgisa, in some distress, goes to see Norma to ask to be released from her vows. Norma, sympathising with her predicament, agrees to do so and asks the name of her lover. At that moment Pollione himself enters and Norma, stunned, realises the truth. She furiously denounces Pollione and the shocked Adalgisa declares that her first loyalty is to Norma, rejecting Pollione’s desperate attempts to persuade her to go with him.

ACT II In her hut Norma stands over her sleeping children, dagger in hand, contemplating the shame and humiliation they will suffer in the future because of her disgrace. She cannot bring herself to harm them, however, and suggests to Adalgisa that she should leave with Pollione and take the children with her to safety. Adalgisa’s response is to say that she will indeed go to Pollione – but only to try and convince him to return to Norma. In an atmosphere of gathering violence Norma learns that Pollione plans to abduct Adalgisa from the temple. Enraged, she strikes the great shield three times and declares war against Rome. Pollione is captured within the sacred temple but, to save his life, Norma offers herself, a disgraced and blasphemous priestess, as an alternative sacrifice. Confiding her children to Oroveso’s care, Norma prepares to mount the funeral pyre, as Pollione, overwhelmed by her selfless love and courage, commits himself to her once more and walks beside her to the flames.

Music and Background

Norma is Bellini’s masterpiece, written for what the composer called the ‘encylopaedic’ range of expression of the great bel canto singer Giuditta Pasta and closely responsive to the libretto of Felice Romani, which passed through many changes before the composer was satisfied with it. Norma herself is one of the most formidable roles in all opera, calling for extremes of tenderness and fury. Not for nothing does she get taken into the repertory of Wagner singers, and Wagner admitted a personal debt to Bellini’s combination of powerful passion with spacious melodies.

Highlights

Norma’s Act II ‘Casta diva’ is a benchmark aria for sopranos with the substance and finesse to tackle it (and there aren’t many of them). Also in Act II comes a superb scene for the two sopranos – ‘Mira o Norma’.

Did You Know?

The two great Normas of modern times once appeared in the opera together, in 1952. Maria Callas took the title role, Joan Sutherland the small part of Clotilde.

The 19th-century soprano, Therese Tietjens, playing Norma, swung her arm so wide as she struck the gong that she hit her leading man, who collapsed unconscious at her feet.

Recommended Recording

Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, John Alexander, London Symphony Orchestra/Richard Bonynge. Decca 425 488-2. A classic from the 1960s, magnificently cast in the two soprano roles, with Sutherland in better voice than when she recorded Norma a second time, aged fìfty-eight(!).

I Puritani

(The Puritans)

FORM: Opera in three acts; in Italian

COMPOSER: Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35)

LIBRETTO: Carlo Pepoli; after Ancelot and Saintine’s play, itself based on Sir Walter Scott’s novel

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Paris, 25 January 1835

Principal Characters

The Puritans

Lord Walton Bass

Sir George Walton, his brother Bass

Sir Richard Forth Baritone

Sir Bruno Robertson Tenor

Lord Arthur Talbot, a Cavalier Tenor

Henrietta of France, Charles I’s widow Mezzo-soprano

Elvira, Lord Walton’s daughter Soprano

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: A fortress outside Plymouth during the English Civil War

ACT I Elvira has finally overcome her father’s objection to her marriage to the Cavalier, Arthur Talbot, leaving Richard Forth a disgruntled and rejected suitor. To Elvira’s joy, distant horns announce Arthur’s impending arrival and he sweeps in in great style, bringing gifts that include a superb white bridal veil for his betrothed. Lord Walton gives Arthur and Elvira a safe conduct pass, saying that he cannot attend the wedding because he must escort a female prisoner, a suspected spy, to London. The prisoner is brought in and Arthur recognises her as the widow of the executed Charles I. Arthur knows that, if anyone finds out who she is, she will be murdered, and he resolves to help her escape. Draping Elvira’s veil over Henrietta’s head, he smuggles her out of the fortress, intercepted only by Richard, who, seeing the woman is not Elvira, is glad to see Arthur go and hopes that he may now win Elvira’s love. On discovering her apparent desertion Elvira loses her reason.

ACT II Elvira’s madness is observed at length in the famous Mad Scene, but the act closes on George Walton and Richard Forth as they confirm their readiness to fight to the death for the Puritan cause and, if necessary, to kill Arthur Talbot.

ACT III Arthur has now delivered Henrietta into safe keeping and is a fugitive. Nevertheless he risks his life to return to Elvira who is so shocked that she seems, partially, to regain her senses. But her obviously fragile mental state deeply disturbs Arthur and he refuses to leave her, even when he hears his Puritan enemies approaching, although he knows that capture will mean death. But, just as he is about to be summarily executed, news arrives of Cromwell’s victory and the granting of a general amnesty. Elvira’s joy finally restores her to sanity, Arthur is a free man and the lovers are united.

Music and Background

Written for Paris, I Puritani is generally considered the most sophisticated – though perhaps among the less dramatic – of Bellini’s opera scores, with a finer grasp of orchestration (the composer’s undeniable weak point) than he showed elsewhere. There is a pervasive militarism in the music, with prominent brass and percussion, and marching rhythms that bear out Bellini’s own description of his work here as ‘robust’ and ‘severe’. But there is also brilliance in the vocal writing, which demands a strong quartet of principal singers and, especially, a tenor with good top notes.

Highlights

Elvira’s Act II ‘Qui la voce’ is one of the more affecting mad scenes in Italian opera; and the duet ‘Suoni la tromba’, also in Act II, is a famously stirring example of Bellini’s martial music.

Did You Know?

Bellini wrote no comedies. He always chose to place his characters in what he termed situazioni laceranti – heart-rending predicaments.

George Bernard Shaw disliked the opera intensely, saying that the music ‘has so little variety in its cloying rhythms that it vies for dullness with any Italian opera on the stage’.

Recommended Recording

Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano, La Scala Milan/Tullio Serafin. EMI CDS7 47308-8. A 1955 recording in mono, but with Callas in superbly stylish form; not always beautiful but powerfully dramatic.

La Sonnambula

(The Sleepwalker)

FORM: Opera in two acts; in Italian

COMPOSER: Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35)

LIBRETTO: Felice Romani; after Scribe and Aumer’s ballet-pantomime

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Milan, 6 March 1831

Principal Characters

Amina, an orphan Soprano

Teresa, her foster-mother Mezzo-soprano

Lisa, an innkeeper Soprano

Alessio, a villager Bass

Elvino, a wealthy landowner Tenor

Count Rodolfo, the local lord Bass

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: A Swiss village; early 19th century

ACT I The villagers have gathered together to celebrate the forthcoming betrothal of Amina and Elvino. The only one not joining in is Lisa, who loves Elvino herself, and is not mollified by the unwelcome attentions of Alessio. The marriage contract is signed; Elvino pledges Amina everything he owns and gives her a ring and a bunch of wild flowers. In return, Amina promises him her love. At that moment a handsome stranger in a soldier’s uniform arrives on the scene, apparently on his way to the castle. No one recognises Count Rodolfo, who is persuaded by Lisa to stay the night at the inn. As dusk approaches, Teresa warns the villagers to go home, for fear of the white phantom that haunts the area. At the inn Lisa is flirting with Rodolfo in his room; she tells him that his identity has been discovered and the villagers will soon come to offer him their respects. They are interrupted by a noise and Lisa quickly leaves. Amina, sleepwalking, enters the room and Rodolfo realises she must be the ‘phantom’. Unwilling to cause her embarrassment, Rodolfo leaves her alone (he exits through the window), just before the villagers crowd in to discover the sleeping Amina in Rodolfo’s room. Lisa has thoughtfully brought Elvino and Teresa along to witness her rival’s disgrace and the girl is roundly condemned by all before the wedding is cancelled.

ACT II The villagers are on their way to the castle to ask for Rodolfo’s help in restoring Amina’s reputation. Elvino and Amina come face to face, but he cannot believe she is innocent and furiously wrenches his ring from her finger. Back in the village square Elvino is preparing to marry Lisa when Rodolfo arrives to try and convince him of Amina’s innocence. At that moment Amina herself appears, sleepwalking on the roof before crossing a dangerous bridge, and carrying the flowers, now withered, that Elvino had given her. She speaks of her sadness at her lost love. Elvino, finally convinced, kneels before her and begs her forgiveness; Amina wakes and they are joyfully reconciled.

Music and Background

La Sonnambula is generally considered Bellini’s first true masterpiece, and a fine example of the vocal style known as bel canto: a term which literally means ‘beautiful song’ but implies far more, including an extreme refinement of tone and technique, and an ability to deal with decorative embellishment. For a bel canto composer, Bellini’s embellishments are actually rather restrained – he preferred to write in long, elegant phrases – and La Sonnambula is remarkable above all for the lyricism of the music provided for the original incumbent of the title role, Giuditta Pasta, one of the supreme singers of her age and a continuing champion of Bellini’s work.

Highlights

Amina’s opening cavatina ‘Come per me sereno’ has beguiling charm; her sleepwalking ‘Ah! non credea mirarti’ in the closing scene is a touching example of Bellini’s extended melody; and her final ‘Ah! non giunge’ is a brilliant showpiece arguably unsurpassed in all bel canto writing.

Did You Know?

Bel canto heroines commonly go mad, a device used to generate a sense of pathos in the character. Amina’s somnambulism is a less extreme equivalent.

The ‘dangerous bridge’ over which Amina sleepwalks was reputedly added for Jenny Lind.

Recommended Recording

Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, National Philharmonic Orchestra/Richard Bonynge. Decca 417 424-2.The second of Sutherland’s two recordings, made in 1980 when her voice was still fresh but more expressive than before. Pavarotti is a hard-to-beat partner.

Alban Berg

(1885–1935)

Wozzeck (1922)

Lulu (1935)

Born in Vienna, Alban Berg was a pupil of Schoenberg who began writing in the opulent post-Mahlerian manner of European composers early in this century and then adopted his teacher’s controversial method of making music out of ‘tone rows’: a technique using sequences of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale in a way that allows no one note greater prominence than any of the others and denies the possibility of a key-centre to anchor the music ‘in C’, ‘in F sharp’, or whatever. Berg was never as strict an exponent of this ‘serial’ method as his teacher, or as his fellow-pupil Anton Webern, which makes him the most accessible of the so-called Second Viennese School of composers. Wozzeck and Lulu have accordingly acquired the status of modern classics, although they were banned in Berg’s own time (the Nazi Third Reich) as degenerate. Berg’s other work includes a Violin Concerto written in memory of Alma Mahler’s daughter, and the Lyric Suite which contains in cryptic number-code a secret love message to his mistress.

Lulu

FORM: Opera in three acts; in German

COMPOSER: Alban Berg (1885–1935)

LIBRETTO: Alban Berg; from two plays by Frank Wedekind

FIRST PERFORMANCE: (Complete) Paris, 24 February 1979

Principal Characters

Lulu Soprano

Dr Schön, a newspaper editor Baritone

Alwa, his son Tenor

Schigolch, an old man Bass-baritone

Lulu’s admirers and lovers

Countess Geschwitz Mezzo-soprano

The Painter Tenor

The Athlete Bass

The Schoolboy Mezzo-soprano

The Marquis Tenor

The Banker Bass

The Prince Tenor

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: Setting: Germany, Paris and London; late 19th century

ACT I Lulu is having her portrait painted as a present, but is caught in a compromising situation with the Painter by her husband, who drops dead from shock. Lulu marries the Painter and is living in some luxury; she has, as Schigolch points out, ‘come a long way’. Dr Schön, one of Lulu’s lovers, comes to tell her that they must stop seeing each other as he is getting engaged, at which Lulu protests vehemently. After she has gone Schön tells the Painter all about her colourful past and the many names by which she was known to her former lovers. The Painter is so distressed that he kills himself. Free again, Lulu compels Schön to call off his engagement.

ACT II Schön and Lulu are now married, but Schön is consumed with suspicious jealousy over Lulu’s many admirers, including his own son, Alwa. Schön overhears Alwa declaring his love for his stepmother and suggests to Lulu that she should end her own life. Lulu, almost distractedly, takes up the gun and shoots Schön.

In a silent, filmed interlude, we learn that Lulu has been jailed for murder. She has contracted cholera, transmitted to her on purpose by Countess Geschwitz, to enable her to escape from the hospital. Lulu, Schigolch and Alwa leave for Paris.

ACT III Lulu is surrounded by a crowd of disreputable characters in a Parisian casino. The Marquis, having failed to blackmail Lulu into joining a Cairo brothel, informs the police of her whereabouts but she manages to escape just in time. Her final home is a dingy attic in a London slum where she supports herself, Alwa and Schigolch by prostitution. They are joined by the faithful Geschwitz. In this final, dark episode of her life Lulu sees Alwa killed by one of her clients before she herself, together with Geschwitz, is murdered by Jack the Ripper.

Music and Background

Lulu is a difficult, abrasive and altogether demanding piece, written for a large orchestra, with a bizarre assortment of characters who give the otherwise dark plot a surreally comic edge. It is constructed entirely from a single row of twelve notes in the closest Berg came to total Serialism. However anarchic it sounds in performance, the score actually works according to meticulously organised formal principles, and for ears accustomed to its sound-world, it presents a curious kind of beauty. Berg died before finishing the orchestration of the last act, and his widow prevented completion of the score by other hands during her lifetime. As a result, Lulu had no complete staging until 1979.

Highlights

For anyone less than steeped in its idiom, the big moments of Lulu will be dramatic rather than musical, including the pivotal film sequence in Act II (where the second half is supposed to be a palindromic mirror-image of the first), and the horrendous death of Lulu at the end (a gift for directors with a lurid imagination).

Did You Know?

Berg’s widow forbade completion of the score for personal reasons: she believed Lulu – probably correctly – to be an oblique portrait of that same lover who features in the code of the Lyric Suite.

Recommended Recording

Teresa Stratas, Franz Mazura, Kenneth Riegel, Paris Opera/Pierre Boulez. DG 415 489-2. A lucid account of the complete score by the cast and conductor responsible for the 1979 premiere.

Wozzeck

FORM: Opera in three acts; in German

COMPOSER: Alban Berg (1885–1935)

LIBRETTO: Alban Berg; after Georg Büchner’s play

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Berlin, 14 December 1925

Principal Characters

Wozzek, a soldier Baritone

Marie, his common-law wife Soprano

Andres, Wozzek’s friend Tenor

Drum-Major Tenor

Doctor Bass

Captain Tenor

An Idiot Tenor

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: Outside a garrison town; around 1820

ACT I While Wozzeck is shaving him, the Captain amuses himself by teasing the soldier who agrees with everything the officer says until the Captain suggests that Wozzeck, with a mistress and a child, has no principles. Wozzeck’s response to this is that only the rich can afford principles. Later, Wozzeck and Andres are cutting sticks in a field when Wozzeck suddenly hallucinates, seeing the whole world as if on fire and hearing noises underground. Meanwhile, Marie is at their home, observing the soldiers marching by her window and, in particular, the Drum-Major. Wozzeck bursts in and tries to tell her of his experience in the field, but he frightens her and she rushes out. The next day Wozzeck relates his story to the Doctor, for whom he is acting as a paid ‘guinea pig’ for the Doctor’s bizarre nutritional experiments. The Doctor is delighted at what he sees as the result of his experiments and foresees great fame and fortune for himself. Marie, in the meantime, has succumbed to the blandishments of the Drum-Major.

ACT II The Doctor and the Captain taunt Wozzeck with Marie’s infidelity and he rushes home to confront her, threatening her with a knife, which he does not use. Wozzeck follows Marie to a crowded inn garden where he sees her dancing with the Drum-Major. Again, he is about to attack them, but the dancing stops before he can act. Alone and tormented, Wozzeck is joined by an Idiot, who tells Wozzeck that the scene before them, although apparently a happy one, is in fact reeking with blood. In his disturbed state of mind Wozzeck begins to be obsessed by the image of blood. Later, in the barracks, he and the Drum-Major fight and Wozzeck is knocked to the ground.

ACT III Marie, overwhelmed by guilt, walks with Wozzeck in the country. A blood-red moon rises over the scene as Wozzeck draws his knife and stabs her to death. He returns to the inn, where his bloodstained hands are noticed and, as a crowd gathers, he stumbles back to the murder scene to search for the knife. In his tormented mental state he imagines himself to be covered in blood and walks into the pond to clean himself, going deeper and deeper until he drowns. At their home, Wozzeck and Marie’s child unconcernedly plays with his hobby-horse before, finding himself alone, he goes in search of his friends.

Music and Background

Easier on the ear than the later Lulu, Wozzeck is a dissonant score that manages to be lyrically seductive and betray little of the complex formal structures by which everything is governed. Act II is designated, rather clinically, a ‘Symphony in Five Moments’ and Act III a set of ‘Six Inventions’, but the writing is vivid, passionate, sympathetic in its treatment of the anti-hero, and disturbing in its sardonic incorporation of popular street music (a device Berg borrowed from Mahler’s symphonies and song cycles).

Highlights

The entire score aches with a sense of gathering catastrophe, but Act III, Scene 2, in which Wozzeck kills Marie as the moon rises, is an especially chilling moment; the Act III, Scene 4 interlude after Wozzeck’s own death is the climax of the piece; and the vignette of Wozzeck’s child murmuring ‘hopp hopp, hopp hopp’ as he goes on playing is as unsettling an end as that of any opera.

Did You Know?

The plot of Wozzeck is based on a real murder which took place in 1824; a German critic at the first (incomplete) performance ‘had the sensation of having been not in a public theatre but in an insane asylum. On the stage, in the orchestra, in the stalls – plain madmen.’

The opening night was preceded by no fewer than one hundred rehearsals.

Recommended Recording

Eberhard Waechter, Anja Silja, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Christoph von Dohnanyi. Decca 417 348-2. A striking performance from the then husband-and-wife team Dohnanyi and Silja, with Schoenberg’s Erwartung as a bonus filler.

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