Book Description

This book is the first full-length critical biography in English of Vincenzo Bellini, and it completes the author's trilogy of biographies of the outstanding pre-Verdian composers of Italy, linking as it does the life of the creator of Norma and I Puritani with those of Rossini and Donizetti. Mercurial, talented, ruled by swiftly fluctuating moods, the young Bellini from the start of his college days in Naples kept up a voluminous correspondence with his friends that gives a particularly rich and intimate view of his character and development as he moved through the musical life of Italy, London, and Paris in the heyday of bel canto. The handsome and self-centered Sicilian prodigy, captured off guard by Heinrich Heine so wickedly as "a sigh in dancing pumps," died at the tragically early age of 33, having written ten operas. Of these, Norma, La Sonnambula, and I Puritani have never disappeared from the repertoires of leading opera houses for over a century, and new recordings by opera stars bear witness to the rising interest in his lesser-known works as Il Pirata and Beatrice di Tenda. He wrote for the greatest singers of his day - Malibran, Grisi, Pasta, and Rubini - and he was the darling of the salons of Europe. This book tells the story of a great composer of opera and a complex, curiously flawed young man, sometimes winningly charming, sometimes abrasive and fearful. Mr. Weinstock, with judicious skill, lets Bellini speak as often as possible in his own words, and the result is the fascinating and shaded self-portrait of an artist at work. The second part of the volume is devoted to a detailed analysis of the operas and the non-operatic compositions, with information about the original casts and subsequent performers of the roles. The book contains a wealth of illustrations, some of which have never before been available for publication.