"The sonnambulist" by Vincenzo Bellini at the Gran Teatre del Liceu

The Liceu brings you one of the most celebrated and enduring icons of bel canto: Vincenzo Bellini's La Sonnambula.

La Sonnambula is a Melodramma in two acts with music by Vincenzo Bellini and libretto by Felice Romani based on La Somnambule by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne, and La Somnambule ou L'arrivée d'un nouveau seigner by Eugène Scribe and Pierre Aumer.

It premiered on March 6, 1831 at the Teatro Carcano in Milan. In Barcelona, it premiered on April 21, 1836 at the Teatre de la Santa Creu. It was not performed at the Liceu until 1848, where it has been seen 132 times, the last one in 2014.

In the pursuit of her dream, a young woman is about to marry her love. Just at that moment, she is discovered by the whole town sleeping at a stranger's house.

The suspicions of infidelity that everyone takes for granted cause the jealous young fiancé to break off their engagement, and it will take two acts to find out that sleepwalking is the true culprit of the mess. Everything ends happily: the presence of the girl walking out the mill window, risking her life, constitutes the definitive proof of her innocence.

Long before verismo exploited the theme of female infidelity from realistic perspectives, Bellini addressed what was then a thorny taboo with great dramatic sensitivity.

Set in a rural environment in the Swiss Alps, also idealized by the romantics in works like Guillaume Tell, La fille du régiment, or Giselle, this "semiseria opera" in two acts confronts the people of these peaceful lands with the miseries of humanity: distrust, hostility, and ostracism in the face of the uncertain shadow of a vulgar suspicion.

The village becomes the third great protagonist of the opera, showing the rural harshness manifested in more rancor than solidarity and more misery than abundance. The sleepwalking of the protagonist acts as the necessary catalyst to awaken everyone from a collective nightmare, while providing the highlight to a poetic score that has become one of the most celebrated and enduring icons of bel canto. The phenomenon of sleep allows overcoming the realistic aspects of the character, similar to the famous scenes of madness beloved by romantics, and its benign nature can lead to the happy ending demanded by the "semiseria opera" and the romanticism of the time.

To decipher the mysteries of the score, deliver the magic of bel canto, and face the brutal vocal demands, we will have on stage Nadine Sierra as Amina and Xabier Anduaga as Elvino, the spectacular heirs of the legendary lead singers of the premiere: Giuditta Pasta and Giovanni Battista Rubini. Bellini's extraordinary lyrical inspiration unfolds his most refined and beautiful melodies to convey the protagonists' feelings. In addition to Elvino's incredible aria ("Ah! perché non posso odiarti"), it has the most admirable moment in one of the composer's most sublime soprano arias, the famous "Ah, non credea mirarti... Ah, non giunge!", which Amina sings in a state of sleepwalking. This coproduction between the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Teatro Real de Madrid, National Theatre of Tokyo, and Teatro Massimo di Palermo, directed by Bárbara Lluch, was an undeniable success at its premiere.

The stage director, after a decade of good work in London - and with a significant agenda in the most prestigious European theaters - respecting the period in which the opera was set, aims to demystify it by considering the #Metoo context, providing the bucolic tale by Bellini with a dramatic final twist with a touch of modernity and feminist perspective. Premiered in Milan in 1831 (and at the Liceu in 1848), it is part of the admired bel canto Bellini trilogy alongside Norma and I Puritani.

La Sonnambula is a romantic melodrama with all the ingredients of a love intrigue, ghostly apparitions, dreams coexisting with a curious scientific incursion into the world of sleepwalking, all treated as a pretext and at the same time as a phenomenon of human pathology.