Vincenzo Bellini

Vincenzo Bellini was born in Catania, Sicily, in November 1801, into a family of church musicians. He studied at the Royal College of Music in Naples under Niccolò Zingarelli, and made his first operatic mark with *Bianca e Gernando* at the Teatro San Carlo in 1826. His next opera, *Il pirata* (Milan, 1827), brought him to the attention of European audiences and established his partnership with the librettist Felice Romani.

Across the seven years that followed he produced the operas on which his reputation rests: *La straniera* (1829), *I Capuleti e i Montecchi* (1830), *La sonnambula* (1831), *Norma* (1831) and *I puritani* (1835). His style — characterised by long melodic lines, refined harmonic colour, and the distinctive bel canto vocal writing that demanded a particular kind of soprano voice — set the standard for the Italian lyric stage and influenced Chopin, Verdi and Wagner. *Norma* in particular has remained one of the central works of the soprano repertoire.

Bellini moved to Paris in 1833 and died there in September 1835, aged only thirty-three, of an acute gastrointestinal illness. He was buried in Père Lachaise before being repatriated to Catania in 1876. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his operas in twentieth-century performance.