BELLINI, VINCENZO (1801--18J5)

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 703 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BEC-BER

BELLINI, VINCENZO (1801--18J5) , operatic composer of the Italian school, was born at Catania in Sicily, on the 1st of November 18or. He was descended from a family of musicians, both his father and grandfather having been composers of some reputation. After having received his preparatory musical education at

home

, he entered the conservatoire of Naples, where he studied singing and composition under Tritto and Zingarelli. He soon began to write pieces for various

instruments

INSTRUMENTS

, as well as a cantata and several masses and other sacred compositions. His first opera, Adelson e Savina, was performed in 1825 at a small theatre in Naples; his second dramatic

work

WORK

, Bianca e Fernando, was produced next year at the San Carlo theatre of the same city, and made his name known in Italy. His next

work

WORK

, Il Pirata (1527), was written for the Scala in

Milan

MILAN
MILAN (Ital. Milano, Ger. Mailand, anc. Mediolanum, q.v.)

, to words by Felice Romano, with whom

Bellini

formed a union of friendship to be severed only by his death. The splendid rendering of the music by Tamburini, Rubini and other

great

GREAT

Italian singers contributed greatly to the success of the work, which at once established the European reputation of its composer. In almot every year of the short remainder of his life he produced a new operatic work, which was received with rapture by the audiences of France, Italy, Germany and England. The names and

dates

DATES

of four of

Bellini

's operas familiar to most lovers of Italian music are: I Montecchi e Capuleti (1830), in which the part of Romeo became a favourite with all the

great

GREAT

contraltos; La Sonnambula (1831); Norma, Bellini's best and most popular creation (1831); and I Puritani (1835), written for the Italian opera in Paris, and to some extent under the influence of French music. In 1833 Bellini had left his country to accompany to England the

singer

SINGER, SIMEON (1846-1906)

Pasta, who had created the part of his Sonnambula. In 1834 he accepted an invitation to write an opera for the national grand opera in Paris. While he was carefully studying the French language and the cadence of French verse for the purpose, he was seized with a sudden illness and died at his villa in

Puteaux

PUTEAUX

near Paris on the 24th of September 1835. His operatic creations are throughout replete with a spirit of gentle melancholy, frequently monotonous and almost always undramatic, but at the same time irresistibly sweet. To this spirit, combined with a rich flow of cantilena, Bellini's operas owe their popularity. " I shall never forget," wrote Wagner, " the impression made upon me by an opera of Bellini at a period when I was completely exhausted with the ever-lastingly abstract complication used in our orchestras, when a simple and noble melody was revealed anew to me."
See also G. Labat, Bellini (Bordeaux, 1865) ; A. Pougin, Bellini, sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1868).

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