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Met Opera Live - Bellini, La Sonnambula:  Metropolitan Opera’s HD transmission live to the Barbican Cinema, London. 21.3.2009 (JPr)


In his review of a recent La Sonnambula release with Natalie Dessay,  in MusicWeb's disc section, Robert J. Farr reminds us of the background of this opera which I summarise here with his permission.

In May 1830 the Duke of Litta and two rich associates wanted to sponsor opera at La Scala. Rossini, Meyerbeer and other composers had been tempted to Paris so they brought together the most famous singers of the time including Giuditta Pasta and the tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini with the composers, Donizetti and Bellini, whom they considered to be the two best active Italian composers. They wanted an opera each from them to a libretto by Romani, also recognised as the best in the business. Plans for the season at La Scala had to be abandoned but it went on at Milan’s Teatro Carcano instead.

Having to complete I Capuletti e i Montecchi in only 26 days, had left the often-ailing Bellini in even poorer health and it was only later in 1830, after he had completed the libretto for Donizetti’s Anna Bolena in the Carcano season that Romani had time to begin on something for Bellini. It was to be an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s romantic drama Hernani that was produced in Paris the previous February and caused quite a stir. Bellini set music for at least five scenes before it became apparent that due to political unrest outside Italy the Milan police censors would not allow it. They turned instead to the politically innocuous subject of La Sonnambula based on Eugène Scribe’s ballet-pantomime. The plot concerns the young and innocent Amina who is about to marry Elvino. Amina sleepwalks and ends up in the room of the local Count who has recently returned to the village incognito. Elvino is tipped-off and finds Amina in this compromising situation and denounces her calling off the marriage. He only becomes convinced of her innocence when he sees her sleepwalking along a very narrow plank over a dangerous mill wheel. Finally he wakes her, they are reunited and all rejoice at the happy ending.

Bellini did not begin to compose La Sonnambula until January 1831 and the scheduled première was put back to 6 March. The ‘semi-serious’ opera was a resounding success and the composer’s evolving musical style was much admired. It established Bellini firmly on the international stage much as Anna Bolena had done for Donizetti and this were two triumphs for the Duke of Litta and his companions. Giuditta Pasta and Rubini created the main roles in these two operas and were an important part of their outstanding success.

So far so good,  but the synopsis provided by The Met for this broadcast contains the following statement about the production which  is almost an apologia for opera-conservatives: ‘Mary Zimmerman’s new production is set in a contemporary rehearsal room, where a traditional production of La Sonnambula, set in a Swiss village, is being prepared. In that rehearsal space, all the events and relations that Bellini’s characters experience also happen to the rehearsing performers in their own “real” lives. In this staging, Amina and Elvino are played by two singers (also named Amina and Elvino) who are, like their fictional counterparts, lovers. The chorus constitutes the population of the Swiss village, and Lisa, the innkeeper of La Sonnambula, is the stage manager.’

That is basically all you need to know and a fun two-and a half hours ensues which  has absolutely nothing to do with Bellini’s La Sonnambula but has everything to do with bringing Bellini to a twenty-first century audience. Natalie Dessay sings Amina again as on the recording reviewed by Bob Farr for the same conductor, Evelino Pidò, and she apparently wanted the production to be set anywhere but a real Swiss village.

Deborah Voigt who introduced The Met’s HD broadcast  called the opera’s story ‘implausible’ and said that the view from the set’s windows was of ‘downtown Manhattan, just north of Union Square’. Then she showed us the costume sketches on the wall, the coffee machine and the water cooler. Dessay who owned up to bringing her own clothes and wearing her own rehearsal trousers and tights said it is like a ‘real rehearsal studio’ and Juan Diego Flórez jokingly  said ‘we are still rehearsing’.

The first thing seen is an illustration of the Mont Blanc Massif which rises to reveal the rehearsal studio. Dessay as Amina flounces in as the diva; elegantly dressed in white with a designer black bag and her mobile phone to her ear. Later before the Count enters, Elvino hears a noise and - at least in the translation says – ‘What’s that noise?’  Amina rushes to her bag and answers her phone. You begin to get the idea what the production is like don’t you? During her first aria ‘Come per me sereno’ she is given a costume fitting for her wedding dress. The climax is her high note which should express her joy at her forthcoming wedding but here is a cry of horror as she surveys the choice of wigs from which they want her to choose. There is a clock prominently on the rear wall showing the passing of rehearsal time and a blackboard shows ‘Act 1 Scene 1 Village Square’, ‘Night the Inn’, ‘A Shady Vale’, and finally - when Amina sleepwalks in at the end -  ‘Elvino’.

Elvino enters in leather jacket and jeans and sings a duet with Amina ‘Prendi, l’ane ti dono’ while they are both learning their choreography. The Count enters as a suavely dressed famous bass who has an immediate effect on the women in the chorus. Amina enters along the centre aisle in the stalls. When Elvino believes he has been betrayed both he and the chorus resort to accentuated stock operatic gestures, the chorus tear their scores up in their anguish, the prompter is pulled out of her box and Elvino calls off the wedding (‘Nun pi nozze’) while being spun around with Amina on the bed.

What started out well now raises more questions that it answers; if they are ‘lovers’ wouldn’t Elvino know that Amina sleepwalks? Why has Amina taken to sleeping in her dressing room, if that is what it’s supposed to be? Why would the chorus sing ‘Here the forest is shady’ if they were in their rehearsal room seemingly on strike? There are still some good moments left however and my attention never wavered anyway.

Plucked strings signalled Elvino entry down some stairs and he launches into his lament ‘Tutto sciolto’ that must have been in Donizetti’s mind when he wrote ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ for Nemorino within a matter of months after the Bellini première. Also the Count as he tries to convince the crowd that Amina sleepwalks shows them a medical dictionary. Then Amina does appear sleepwalking on a ledge outside the rehearsal room and then walks a plank that extended over the orchestra pit towards the audience. Finally it all ends up in Mel Brooks’s ‘Springtime for Hitler’ territory as the chorus who were previously in street clothes don dirndls, lederhosen and hats to perform the ‘real’ ending of the ‘real’ opera they were rehearsing.

It was in the final moments when Natalie Dessay - who had been an incomparable singing actress throughout disproving her own statement that ‘it’s impossible to sing and really act at the same time’ - was at her very best with a most affecting and mournful ‘Ah! non credea mirarti’ and a positively sparkling cabaletta ‘Ah! Non giunge uman pensiero.’  Here she hits  high notes when being is lifted high in the air and it was only when she was lowered down again that  prompter Carrie-Anne Matheson, who had earlier been interviewed by Ms Voigt, did her real job by very audibly giving Ms Dessay her cue.  Elsewhere Dessay sang with radiance, good diction and subtle phrasing.

Juan Diego Flórez was probably not the voice that purists would want for Elvino as the role does not have the Rossinian tenor freedom and pinging top notes. But it is unlikely that Elvino could find a better interpreter than  Flórez’s with his youthful good looks, flexible voice, smooth legato and secure, if slightly dark, top. Jennifer Black was a warmly appealing Lisa, Jane Bunnell a suitable frumpy, caring ‘foster-mother’/assistant Teresa, and Michele Pertusi looked sophisticated in his cashmere coat and sang with a baleful charm. My only concern was with the under-rehearsed chorus who although they sang well enough, had  some members looking very committed to this interpretation whilst others seemed disengaged. Evelyn Pidò led his excellent orchestra through an account of the score that was full of wit, variety and character and luxuriated in Bellini’s long melodic lines.

I think Mary Zimmerman’s production will have worked better in close-up than in the vast recesses of the opera house but even so, the broadcast was not one of the best of the Met Live ones I have seen. There were too many odd angles showing the wings, TV sets, cameras and (once) the off-stage conductor for the chorus. These opera broadcasts are best when the mechanics are out of view and the magic is left intact. The series is called The Met: Live in HD yet when the signal failed during the curtain calls I heard someone say to their companion,  ‘Oh it must have been live then!’

Jim Pritchard

The Barbican's Met Opera Live series continues on 9th May with Rossini’s La Cenerentola: for further details visit www.barbican.org.uk/film or check the listings at your local cinemas.


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