Vincenzo Bellini

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Portrait of Vincenzo Bellini
Bellini's birthplace in Catania
Bellini's tomb in Catania Cathedral

Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (born November 3, 1801 in Catania , Sicily , † September 23, 1835 in Puteaux near Paris ) was an Italian opera composer .

Life

Vincenzo Bellini was the eldest son of Rosario Bellini (1776-1840) and Agata Ferlito. He was born the son and grandson of church musicians. His date of birth is not certain. At the age of three he began to play the piano, and when he was six he tried his hand at composing. He attracted attention early on in the church choir; As a twelve year old he got to know the chamber music of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . He received his first music lessons from his grandfather Vincenzo Tobia Bellini (1744–1829), who came from Abruzzo and came to Catania around 1767, where he had worked as Kapellmeister at the cathedral . Bellini's first compositions were written between 1813 and 1818 (most of them cannot be precisely dated), in addition to some settings of sacred texts, above all, small instrumentals and songs with piano accompaniment for the salons of high society in Catania, to which Bellini quickly found access. The Duke and Duchess of Sammartino made it possible for him to study at the Reale Collegio di Musica di San Sebastiano in Naples, which he attended from 1819 to 1825. His most important teachers there were initially Giovanni Furno (harmony), Giacomo Tritto (counterpoint) and Carlo Conti (harpsichord); later he was taught by the famous Nicola Zingarelli , director of the conservatory and himself an esteemed opera composer. During these years in Naples he composed Bellini's only work for organ, an organ sonata .

At the Conservatory Theater on February 12, 1825, Bellini performed the opera Adelson e Salvini as his journeyman's play . Their success drew Domenico Barbaja , the impresario of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, to Bellini's attention. Barbaja was known for his discoveries of promising talent (he had also promoted Gioachino Rossini ); he commissioned Bellini for the opera Bianca e Fernando , which premiered on May 30, 1826 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples and was so successful that the La Scala in Milan and the houses of fashionable society opened up for Bellini.

Then the Teatro alla Scala in Milan became interested in a collaboration with Bellini. There he met the librettist Felice Romani , who wrote the text for Il Pirata and all of his subsequent operas except for the last opera I Puritani , whose textbook was written by Count Carlo Pepoli. The Milan premiere of Il Pirata on October 27, 1827 gave Bellini the breakthrough. It is also considered to be the hour of birth of romantic Italian opera. La Straniera (premiere February 14, 1829, Teatro alla Scala) underlined Bellini's position as one of the now leading Italian opera composers, which could not be shaken by the failure of Zaira (premiere May 16, 1829 at the Teatro Ducale in Parma). He received an offer from the Teatro La Fenice in Venice to set Romani's libretto I Capuleti ei Montecchi (a version of the Romeo and Juliet material independent of William Shakespeare ) after the originally intended Giovanni Pacini had canceled at short notice. In order to be able to deliver his new work on time, Bellini used larger parts from the hapless Zaira in a reworked form. At the premiere on March 11, 1830, I Capuleti ei Montecchi were received with applause; they were particularly grateful to Bellini for having "saved" the season that would otherwise have ended without a novelty.

In the summer of 1830, Bellini and Romani were working on a new opera Ernani after the beginning of the same year in Paris premiered drama Hernani of Victor Hugo . When the material was banned by the censors as a precaution, they stopped working. In the following carnival season, Bellini's friend and most successful competitor Gaetano Donizetti celebrated a sensational triumph with Anna Bolena on December 26, 1830 in the Teatro Carcano in Milan. In order to avoid direct competition, Bellini chose an idyllic Swiss village story with a happy ending instead of historical material for his new opera La sonnambula , which was released on March 6, 1831 at the same theater. According to the report by the composer Michail Glinka , both the singers and the audience were moved to tears by Bellini's music.

For the next opera Norma Romani arranged a tragedy by Alexandre Soumet , which had already served Giovanni Pacini as the basis for his opera La Sacerdotessa d'Irminsul . For the fiasco at the premiere of Norma on December 26, 1831 in the Scala, the clique of Pacini's supporters is blamed primarily, who are said to have whistled Bellini's opera for a fee, which was common at the time. From the second performance, however, Norma began to assert itself and was soon hailed as a masterpiece.

In 1832 Bellini traveled to his native Sicily via Naples, where he was given a triumphant welcome. He then accepted an invitation to London to study several of his works there. His next collaboration with Felice Romani would be his last. After Beatrice di Tenda had failed on March 16, 1833 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Bellini blamed the textbook Romanis; the latter in turn accused the composer of neglecting art through his love affairs. These disputes between the two artists and their followers were publicly debated in the press for weeks and led to a break between the poet and the composer.

In fact, Bellini's love life was marked by three women, the "Tre Giuditte": the distinguished Milanese Giuditta Cantù , who was married to the silk manufacturer and composer Fernando Turina; the singer Giuditta Pasta , the first Amina, Norma, Beatrice; and Giuditta Grisi , for whom he wrote the parts of Romeo and Adalgisa.

Bellini composed his last opera for the Théâtre-Italien in Paris, where I Puritani premiered on January 24, 1835. This triumph of the first French commission was celebrated, crowned by an Order of the Legion of Honor and an audience with Queen Maria Amalia . Shortly afterwards, when his longstanding liver and bowel disease worsened, Bellini retired to his country house in Puteaux. His death on September 23, 1835 came as a surprise to all outsiders and led to speculation about possible poisoning. Bellini was honored with a ceremony the size of a state funeral. At the memorial service on October 2, 1835 in the Invalides, there were soloists from the Théâtre-Italy and 350 choristers; he was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery . In 1876 Bellini's embalmed body was transferred to Catania. Puteaux is now part of La Défense , the skyscraper district in the west of Paris, and part of Puteaux is now called the “Quartier Bellini”.

meaning

Bellini monument in Catania

Vincenzo Bellini is considered to be the creator of the romantic Italian opera, the "Melodramma tragico". His main librettist Felice Romani played an important role in this creation. In Norma , which is regarded as Bellini's and Romani's main work, both succeeded in combining elements of the horror romance that was emerging at the time with the dramaturgy of classical tragedy. Even Richard Wagner was Norma praised as a model of a musical tragedy. Romani's highly cultivated language, technically trained on models from the 18th century such as Pietro Metastasio, also finds a new tone for the passionately heightened sensations that dominate the characters in the drama.

In order to do justice to Romani's texts, Bellini created an equally novel musical language, which is mainly characterized by the departure from the then still dominant style of Gioachino Rossini . In place of Rossini's ornate vocal lines, Bellini used predominantly syllabic melodies closely related to the text. This principle of “one note per syllable” has seldom been implemented as consistently as in the duet Quest'ultimo addio from La Straniera . Bellini moved away from this radical position somewhat in his subsequent works. La Sonnambula , along with Norma, his most frequently performed opera, is characterized above all by the revival of the supple, folk-influenced melody typical of the Neapolitan school of the late 18th century, enriched by a new romantic sensibility. This “canto popolaresco” was then also recorded by Gaetano Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi , on which Bellini had a great influence. In addition, Bellini developed a very special type of long-spun lyrical cantilenas that manage entirely without repetitions of individual passages and achieve a previously unknown intensity in the expression of elegiac moods. Prime examples of this "melodie lunghe lunghe lunghe", as Verdi called it, are the first part of the aria finale "Ah non credea mirarti" from La Sonnambula and "Casta Diva", the famous prayer to the moon goddess from Norma .

Bellini deliberately reduced Rossini's luxurious orchestral treatment and, in his most famous pieces in particular, often limited himself to emphatically simple accompanying figures. In the past, this was often interpreted as a lack of compositional skills, but corresponds to his aesthetic of the dominance of singing. To Conte Carlo Pepoli, the lyricist of I Puritani , he said (in an undated letter, probably from the spring of 1834): "Opera has to draw tears, make people shudder and let them die through singing." This is why Bellini is often seen as one-sided considered melancholy, but there is enough evidence to the contrary, such as the warrior choir “Guerra, guerra!” in Act 2 by Norma or the fiery bass duet “Suoni la tromba” from I Puritani , which enjoyed great popularity during the Risorgimento .

Operas

Commemoration

Vincenzo Bellini and a scene from the opera Norma on the Italian 5,000 lire banknote

Vincenzo Bellini and a scene from the opera Norma are depicted on the last Italian 5,000 lire banknote issued by the Banca d'Italia between 1985 and 2001.

literature

See also

Web links

Commons : Vincenzo Bellini  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bellini, Vincenzo: Sonata per Organo. ed. by Rudolf Ewerhart. Vienna and Munich (Doblinger) = Diletto musicale 824. Afterword, unnumbered p. 7.
personal data
SURNAME Bellini, Vincenzo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bellini, Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian opera composer
DATE OF BIRTH November 3, 1801
PLACE OF BIRTH Catania , Sicily
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1835
Place of death Puteaux near Paris