United States Bellini, La Sonnambula: Soloists, Refrain and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera / Riccardo Frizza (conductor). Recorded dwell (directed by Gary Halbvorson) on the Metropolitan Opera, New York, 18.10.2025 and considered as an encore displaying on the Everyman Cinema, Chelmsford, Essex. (JPr)
Except my reminiscence has failed me (probably) this was solely my second efficiency of Bellini’s La Sonnambula I’ve seen and heard, and nearly precisely 44 years after the primary one at Covent Backyard that includes Ileana Cotrubas as Amina and Dennis O’Neill as Elvino.
Rolando Villazón – the best Hoffmann I’ve ever seen in Offenbach’s opera – brings his model of Bellini’s La Sonnambula to the Met through Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2021, Good in 2022 and Dresden in 2023. It was great to listen to the all the time charismatic Villazón lucidly clarify his concepts for the opera in a movie phase throughout the interval. It’s price quoting him at size as a result of his phrases about what I noticed might be extra helpful than mine.
‘Amina … is a personality that desires to belong to the society however there’s something in herself that tells her “You aren’t like that”. And so, the idea I got here up with is to remodel this group into a really strict group, very patriarchal, parochial group, very non secular. The refrain and the folks of the city are very formal. I’ve requested them to maintain their arms subsequent to the physique [and] don’t shake arms …
Now we have created this sq. surrounded by doorways, by the homes, just like the non-public world the place issues occur inside that we don’t know what occurred however as soon as we’re within the sq. we behave the way in which we now have to behave – and behind we now have the mountains, lengthy, massive landscapes. Every little thing is white, every part has the sensation of the snow, of isolation.
Amina, she’s in touch with nature, she desires to rejoice however she’s supposed to not categorical all of that. So I create, earlier than something occurs, already a battle between herself and the society she lives in, a relentless stress, making an attempt to slot in the society, and making an attempt to be who she actually is. To make it symbolic, poetic in order for you, I’ve a personality who comes from outdoors, from the mountains, and retains calling Amina to hitch her. That is the decision of the wild, the decision of looking inside you.’
Bellini’s 1831 bel canto showcase, La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker, clearly!), is about Amina, a younger lady who lives in a particularly remoted Alpine village. Her marriage ceremony to Elvino, a farmer, known as off when she sleepwalks into a wierd gentleman’s bed room and is later found together with his gown over her. Amina is accused of infidelity, although her mom Teresa, a mill proprietor, believes in her innocence. Essential to this skinny story are Lisa, an inn proprietor, who was as soon as engaged to Elvino (and nonetheless loves him) and Alessio, a younger peasant besotted with Lisa. In Villazón’s model Alessio is the strict pastor of this religiously religious group or sect who will excommunicate Amina on the finish of the primary act. Lisa has recognised the stranger as Rodolfo, the son of a long-lost rely, and flirts with him. At this level they’re interrupted by the sleepwalking Amina who’s believed to be the phantom haunting the village. Left alone Rodolfo takes pity on Amina, leaving her innocently sleeping and lined up. The villagers merely discover her like this in the course of the sq..
Though talked about in Felici Romani’s libretto, now there is no such thing as a mill, no inn, no farm, no arrival for Rodolfo on horseback, no citadel and no wooden. Every little thing is confined to Johannes Leiacker’s single set which creates a claustrophobic world with the sq. surrounded by 9 nearly-always shut doorways and populated by villagers in Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s severely plain, sombrely colored costumes. The one method into this closed society is by a single ladder down from the mountains.
Within the second act – the slightly fickle – Elvino now plans to marry Lisa. Nevertheless, a somnambulant Amina is noticed precariously strolling down a treacherous cliff edge and Rodolfo is ready to proclaim his and Amina’s innocence – and that Lisa isn’t as pure because the pushed snow herself. The marriage of Elvino and Amina is again on, although whereas within the unique plot there’s reconciliation and a contented ending, Villazón has Amina lastly making her escape and reacting to that ‘name of the wild’. She is an Amina-lookalike ballerina (Niara Hardister) who has mirrored Amina’s inside needs at instances throughout the opera from on excessive.
I discovered this fairly a compelling staging during which Villazón brings readability to a slightly ridiculous story and overcomes a few of the opera’s longueurs too. He was helped by a solid of (principally) superb singer-actors creating real drama from one thing so ludicrous. Nadine Sierra was a vison certainly in her white shift and dropped at Amina an interesting wide-eyed marvel of what a greater future would possibly maintain for her, slightly than revealing her character’s exasperation with the restrictions of her present life. (Witness Amina’s amazement on the novelties popping out of Rodolfo’s journey bag: a globe, a newspaper, a telescope … and a half-bottle of spirits.) Sierra is among the foremost sopranos of this era and she or he was in exceptional voice from her opening joyful eve-of-wedding ‘Come per me sereno / oggi rinacque il di!’ to her concluding ‘Ah! non giunge uman pensiero / al contento ond’io son piena’ sung ecstatically as her escape to freedom attracts close to and ending in a shocking excessive F (I consider). Sierra has a transparent, agile voice, that’s even all through its vary and able to quick coloratura and – as indicated – astonishing excessive notes.
Elvino was Xabier Anduaga, the younger Spanish tenor who solely made his Met debut as not too long ago as 2023 singing Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. The Met’s normal supervisor described him as sounding like ‘a younger Pavarotti’, although I don’t suppose such an exalted comparability could be made but. There was an acceptable passion to Elvino’s Act I ‘Prendi: l’anel ti dono / che un dì recava all’ara’ and subsequent duet with Amina, after which in Act II he introduced the poignancy of heartbreak to ‘Ah! Perché non posso odiarti, infedel, com’io vorrei!’. As refined as his method clearly is, for me the blandness I perceived in Anduaga’s vocal characterisation matched his stage persona as a slightly too stiff and uncompromising Elvino.
Soprano Sydney Mancasola was the conspiratorial Lisa, spurning Alessio’s advances and continuously making an attempt to undermine Elvino and Amina. Mancasola sang with an appealingly vivid voice that complemented properly these of Sierra and Anduaga. Not getting loads to sing although impressing nonetheless, had been Alexander Vinogradov as the doubtless rakish however in the end sympathetic Rodolfo (and what a wide-ranging bass voice he has); bass-baritone Nicholas Newton was making his Met debut as Alessio and was given by Villazón the break up character of lovelorn suitor to Lisa and the strict disciplinarian to his flock, and Newton sang securely as did Deborah Nansteel as Teresa, Amina’s deeply involved mom.
Each the Refrain and Orchestra of the Met had been at their nearly unparalleled greatest. Conductor Riccardo Frizza clearly revealed his obvious ease with Bellini’s bel canto fashion and revelled in all of the hovering melodies and dramatic ensembles, while giving his singers the near-perfect accompaniment – and thereby all the required assist – they wanted. With Bellini it’s primarily all concerning the voice!
Jim Pritchard
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Featured Picture: The Met’s La Sonnambula Act I © Marty Sohl/Met Opera
Manufacturing:
Manufacturing – Rolando Villazón
Set designer – Johannes Leiacker
Costume designer – Brigitte Reiffenstuel
Lighting designer – Donald Holder
Projection designer – Renaud Rubiano
Choreographer – Leah Hausman
Refrain director – Tilman Michael
The Met: Dwell In HD Host – Rhiannon Giddins
Solid:
Lisa – Sydney Mancasola
Alessio – Nicholas Newton
Amina – Nadine Sierra
Teresa – Deborah Nansteel
Notary – Scott Scully
Elvino – Xabier Anduaga
Rely Rodolfo – Alexander Vinogradov
Solo dancer – Niara Hardister
