Vincenzo Bellini - Sicilian Opera Master

I was 15 years old the first time I heard the music of Bellini. A mate of mine’s father was seriously into classical music and one evening I happened to be round my friend’s home when I heard this heart-rending melody coming from a room nearby. I can recall being allowed to listen to it more closely. ‘It’s Maria Callas singing a number from an opera by an obscure Italian composer called Bellini,’ said my friend’s dad. ‘The opera is called La Sonnambula, and it means ‘The Sleepwalker’. Well, I cycled home trying like hell to remember that melody, and something like it was still running through my brain as I dropped off to sleep that night. It was the first time in weeks I hadn’t gone to sleep singing, I Wanna Hold Your Hand in my head. Only Vincenzo Bellini can do this.

Bellini was born in the baroque city of Catania in Eastern Sicily on 3rd November 1801. He was given piano lessons by his father, a musician, and began studying composition with his grandfather when six years old. Within a few years the young Bellini’s sacred pieces were being performed in the churches of Catania, and his songs and instrumental works were being heard in the salons of the local aristocracy. At 18, Bellini went to Naples to the conservatory there, under the director Nicola Zingarelli. In 1825 his opera Adelson e Salvini was produced at the conservatory and its success resulted in commissions from the Teatro S Carlo and from La Scala, Milan. It was at the Teatro S Carlo that his opera Il Pirata launched his career, in 1827.

At this stage Bellini’s influences were the teaching of Zingarelli and the songs of his native Sicily and Naples. In fact, Zingarelli concentrated on giving his pupil a grounding in the works of Vivaldi, Haydn and Mozart, and took great pains not to let him hear the music of the most successful operatic composer of the day, Rossini. In the event, Bellini did not hear one of Rossini’s operas until 1824, by which time his style had been formed - Rossini’s easy-going note-spinning would probably have led Bellini into the realms of pastiche! In later years Verdi was to refer to Bellini’s ‘long, long melodies, such as no one has ever written before’, and, indeed, it is this melodic style which influenced later Italian opera in the 19th century from Verdi through to the Puccini of La Boheme.