• 1243
• Articles
• 24 Feb 2020

Probably one of the most famous operas by Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor is an « extraordinary triumph » since its creation at the Teatro San Carlo di Napoli in 1835, thanks to an exalted composition and to a simple and effective libretto, but also thanks to its (many) successives singers. Lucia di Lammermoor experienced a […]

• 1250
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• 24 Feb 2020

Callas is Medea. Of course, she was Tosca and a host of other operatic characters as well, thanks to her uncanny ability to adapt her voice and style to the requirements of a role, but Medea is high among her most complete characterizations. It also was a role she sang often–too often for the health […]

• 1417
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• 24 Feb 2020

One popular view of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma is that the title role is so outrageously difficult to sing—and the work itself so little worth doing if you haven’t a soprano up to the mark—that the opera has only survived, in the years since its première in 1831, as a vehicle for a few particularly endowed […]

• 1476
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• 24 Feb 2020

Abstract: I Puritani is the masterpiece that crowned the creation of the Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, being remarked and appreciated for the richness of his melodicity and profound symbols filled with the inspiration and creativity of a creator. This was the last of the ten works composed by Bellini, whose disappearance was premature, at only […]

• 1671
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• 24 Feb 2020

Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was one of the most important composers of Italian opera in his time. He was born in 1801 in Catania, Sicily, to a family already steeped in music; his father and grandfather were both career musicians. He began composing before receiving any formal music education. Bellini developed a reputation for […]

• 2201
• Articles
• 24 Feb 2020

Historical Background “One of the most profoundly moving operatic experiences of my life, Anna Bolena suddenly showed me that Donizetti was a musicodramatic creator of far greater power and importance than any of my earlier contacts with others of his operas had led me to believe”, writes Weinstock in his preface to his Donizetti monograph […]