Vincenzo Bellini
(born November 3, 1801,
Catania
, Sicily [Italy]?died September 23, 1835,
Puteaux
, near Paris, France) was an Italian
operatic
composer with a gift for creating vocal melody at once pure in style and sensuous in expression. His influence is reflected not only in later operatic
compositions
, including the early works of
Richard Wagner
, but also in the instrumental
music
of
Chopin
and
Liszt
.
Born into a family of musicians, Bellini produced his first works while still a student at the Naples Conservatory, where he had been sent by his father, an organist. Bellini gained the patronage of an important impresario, who commissioned
Bianca e Fernando
for the
Naples
opera. The success of this early work led to other commissions.
Il pirata
(1827), written for
La Scala
, the opera house at
Milan
, earned him an international reputation. Bellini was fortunate in having as
librettist
the best Italian theatre poet of the day,
Felice Romani
, with whom he
collaborated
in his next six operas. The most important of these were
I Capuleti e i Montecchi
(1830), based on
Shakespeare
’s
Romeo and Juliet
;
La sonnambula
(1831;
The Sleepwalker
); and
Norma
(1831).
La sonnambula
, an opera semiseria (serious but with a happy ending), became very popular, even in England, where an English version appeared. Bellini’s masterpiece,
Norma,
a tragedy set in ancient
Gaul
, achieved lasting success despite an initial failure.
Britannica Quiz
Composers & Their Music
Bellini lived briefly in
London
in 1833 and then went to
Paris
. There, composer
Gioachino Rossini
’s influence secured for him a commission to write an opera for the Theatre-Italien. The result was
I puritani
(1835), the last of Bellini’s nine operas; although handicapped by an
inept
libretto, it is in many ways his most ambitious and beautiful work.
Bellini’s fame was closely bound up with the
bel canto
style of the great singers of his day. He was not a reformer; his ideals were those of
Haydn
and
Mozart
, and he strove for clarity, elegance of form and melody, and a close union of words and music. Yet with perseverance he corrected some of the grosser abuses of opera then current. While he subordinated the
orchestra
accompaniment to the singers and placed upon their voices the responsibility for dramatic expression, his harmony was more enterprising than that of his
contemporary
Gaetano Donizetti
, and his handling of the orchestra in introductions and
interludes
was far from perfunctory. It is, however, for the individual charm and elegance of his luminous vocal melody that Bellini is remembered.