United States Bellini, La Sonnambula: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera / Riccardo Frizza (conductor). Recorded live (directed by Gary Halbvorson) at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, 18.10.2025 and viewed as an encore showing at the Everyman Cinema, Chelmsford, Essex. (JPr)
Unless my memory has failed me (possibly) this was only my second performance of Bellini’s La Sonnambula I have seen and heard, and almost exactly 44 years after the first one at Covent Garden featuring Ileana Cotrubas as Amina and Dennis O’Neill as Elvino.
Rolando Villazón – the finest Hoffmann I have ever seen in Offenbach’s opera – brings his version of Bellini’s La Sonnambula to the Met via Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2021, Nice in 2022 and Dresden in 2023. It was wonderful to hear the always charismatic Villazón lucidly explain his ideas for the opera in a film segment during the interval. It is worth quoting him at length because his words about what I saw will be more useful than mine.
‘Amina … is a character that wants to belong to the society but there is something in herself that tells her “You are not like that”. And so, the concept I came up with is to transform this community into a very strict community, very patriarchal, parochial community, very religious. The chorus and the people of the town are very formal. I have asked them to keep their hands next to the body [and] don’t shake hands …
We have created this square surrounded by doors, by the houses, like the private world where things happen inside that we don’t know what happened but once we are in the square we behave the way we have to behave – and behind we have the mountains, long, big landscapes. Everything is white, everything has the feeling of the snow, of isolation.
Amina, she’s in contact with nature, she wants to rejoice but she’s supposed not to express all of that. So I create, before anything happens, already a conflict between herself and the society she lives in, a constant tension, trying to fit in the society, and trying to be who she really is. To make it symbolic, poetic if you want, I have a character who comes from outside, from the mountains, and keeps calling Amina to join her. This is the call of the wild, the call of searching inside of you.’
Bellini’s 1831 bel canto showcase, La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker, obviously!), is about Amina, a young woman who lives in an extremely isolated Alpine village. Her wedding to Elvino, a farmer, is called off when she sleepwalks into a strange gentleman’s bedroom and is later discovered with his robe over her. Amina is accused of infidelity, though her mother Teresa, a mill owner, believes in her innocence. Crucial to this thin story are Lisa, an inn owner, who was once engaged to Elvino (and still loves him) and Alessio, a young peasant besotted with Lisa. In Villazón’s version Alessio is the strict pastor of this religiously devout community or sect who will excommunicate Amina at the end of the first act. Lisa has recognised the stranger as Rodolfo, the son of a long-lost count, and flirts with him. At this point they are interrupted by the sleepwalking Amina who is believed to be the phantom haunting the village. Left alone Rodolfo takes pity on Amina, leaving her innocently sleeping and covered up. The villagers simply find her like this in the middle of the square.
Although mentioned in Felici Romani’s libretto, now there is no mill, no inn, no farm, no arrival for Rodolfo on horseback, no castle and no wood. Everything is confined to Johannes Leiacker’s single set which creates a claustrophobic world with the square surrounded by nine nearly-always shut doors and populated by villagers in Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s severely plain, sombrely coloured costumes. The only way into this closed society is by a single ladder down from the mountains.
In the second act – the rather fickle – Elvino now plans to marry Lisa. However, a somnambulant Amina is spotted precariously walking down a treacherous cliff edge and Rodolfo is able to proclaim his and Amina’s innocence – and that Lisa isn’t as pure as the driven snow herself. The wedding of Elvino and Amina is back on, though while in the original plot there is reconciliation and a happy ending, Villazón has Amina finally making her escape and reacting to that ‘call of the wild’. She is an Amina-lookalike ballerina (Niara Hardister) who has reflected Amina’s inner desires at times during the opera from on high.
I found this quite a compelling staging in which Villazón brings clarity to a rather ridiculous story and overcomes some of the opera’s longueurs too. He was helped by a cast of (mostly) fine singer-actors creating genuine drama from something so ludicrous. Nadine Sierra was a vison indeed in her white shift and brought to Amina an appealing wide-eyed wonder of what a better future might hold for her, rather than revealing her character’s exasperation with the restrictions of her current life. (Witness Amina’s amazement at the novelties coming out of Rodolfo’s travel bag: a globe, a newspaper, a telescope … and a half-bottle of spirits.) Sierra is one of the foremost sopranos of this generation and she was in remarkable voice from her opening joyful eve-of-wedding ‘Come per me sereno / oggi rinacque il di!’ to her concluding ‘Ah! non giunge uman pensiero / al contento ond’io son piena’ sung ecstatically as her escape to freedom draws near and ending in a stunning high F (I believe). Sierra has a clear, agile voice, that is even throughout its range and capable of fast coloratura and – as indicated – astonishing high notes.
Elvino was Xabier Anduaga, the young Spanish tenor who only made his Met debut as recently as 2023 singing Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. The Met’s general manager described him as sounding like ‘a young Pavarotti’, though I don’t think such an exalted comparison can be made yet. There was a suitable ardour to Elvino’s Act I ‘Prendi: l’anel ti dono / che un dì recava all’ara’ and subsequent duet with Amina, and then in Act II he brought the poignancy of heartbreak to ‘Ah! Perché non posso odiarti, infedel, com’io vorrei!’. As refined as his technique clearly is, for me the blandness I perceived in Anduaga’s vocal characterisation matched his stage persona as a rather too stiff and uncompromising Elvino.
Soprano Sydney Mancasola was the conspiratorial Lisa, spurning Alessio’s advances and constantly trying to undermine Elvino and Amina. Mancasola sang with an appealingly bright voice that complemented well those of Sierra and Anduaga. Not getting a lot to sing though impressing nonetheless, were Alexander Vinogradov as the potentially rakish but ultimately sympathetic Rodolfo (and what a wide-ranging bass voice he has); bass-baritone Nicholas Newton was making his Met debut as Alessio and was given by Villazón the split personality of lovelorn suitor to Lisa and the stern disciplinarian to his flock, and Newton sang securely as did Deborah Nansteel as Teresa, Amina’s deeply concerned mother.
Both the Chorus and Orchestra of the Met were at their almost unparalleled best. Conductor Riccardo Frizza clearly revealed his apparent ease with Bellini’s bel canto style and revelled in all the soaring melodies and dramatic ensembles, whilst giving his singers the near-perfect accompaniment – and thereby all the necessary support – they needed. With Bellini it is primarily all about the voice!
Jim Pritchard
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Featured Image: The Met’s La Sonnambula Act I © Marty Sohl/Met Opera
Production:
Production – Rolando Villazón
Set designer – Johannes Leiacker
Costume designer – Brigitte Reiffenstuel
Lighting designer – Donald Holder
Projection designer – Renaud Rubiano
Choreographer – Leah Hausman
Chorus director – Tilman Michael
The Met: Live In HD Host – Rhiannon Giddins
Cast:
Lisa – Sydney Mancasola
Alessio – Nicholas Newton
Amina – Nadine Sierra
Teresa – Deborah Nansteel
Notary – Scott Scully
Elvino – Xabier Anduaga
Count Rodolfo – Alexander Vinogradov
Solo dancer – Niara Hardister