While his family wasn't wealthy enough to support that lifestyle, Bellini's growing reputation could not be overlooked. For well-off students, this would include moving to Naples. Among them were the nine Versetti da cantarsi il Venerdi Santo, eight of which were based on texts by Metastasio.īy 1818 Bellini had independently completed several additional orchestral pieces and at least two settings of the Mass Ordinary: one in D Major, the other in G Major, both of which survive and have been commercially recorded. Soon after, the young composer began to write compositions. Īfter 1816, Bellini began living with his grandfather, from whom he received his first music lessons. One critic, Stellios Galatopoulos, deliberates the "facts" presented in the précis, but also provides a reliable source for these compositions, Galatopoulos expresses some skepticism regarding the young Bellini's child prodigy status. Additionally, he makes the point in regard to Bellini's apparent knowledge of languages and philosophy: "Bellini never became a well-educated man". Bellini's biographer Herbert Weinstock regards some of these accounts as no more than myths, not being supported from other, more reliable sources. The document states that Bellini's first five pieces were composed when he was just six years old and "at seven he was taught Latin, modern languages, rhetoric, and philosophy". By the age of five, he could apparently play "marvelously". Īn anonymous twelve-page hand-written history, held in Catania's Museo Civico Belliniano, states that he could sing an aria by Valentino Fioravanti at eighteen months, that he began studying music theory at two years of age and the piano at three.
His grandfather, Vincenzo Tobia Bellini, had studied at the conservatory in Naples and, in Catania from 1767 forward, had been an organist and teacher, as had Vincenzo's father, Rosario. 7.1 I puritani: January 1834 to January 1835īellini's birthplace, the Palazzo Gravina-Cruyllas, Catania, circa 1800īorn in Catania, at the time part of the Kingdom of Sicily, the eldest of seven children in the family, he became a child prodigy within a highly musical family.
"The genuine triumph" of I puritani in January 1835 in Paris capped a significant career. Both I Capuleti e i Montecchi at La Fenice in 1830 and La sonnambula in Milan in 1831 reached new triumphal heights, although initially Norma, given at La Scala in 1831 did not fare as well until later performances elsewhere.
In considering which of his operas can be seen to be his greatest successes over the almost two hundred years since his death, Il pirata laid much of the groundwork in 1827, achieving very early recognition in comparison to Donizetti's having written thirty operas before his major 1830 triumph with Anna Bolena. Those musicologists who consider Bellini to be merely a melancholic tunesmith are now in the minority. Of the 19th-century giants, only Berlioz demurred. Liszt and Chopin professed themselves fans. Verdi raved about his "long, long, long melodies such as no one before had written." Wagner, who rarely liked anyone but himself, was spellbound by Bellini's almost uncanny ability to match music with text and psychology. also hugely influential, as much admired by other composers as he was by the public. Other sources of information come from correspondence saved by other friends and business acquaintances.īellini was the quintessential composer of the Italian bel canto era of the early 19th century, and his work has been summed up by the London critic Tim Ashley as: Many years later, in 1898, Giuseppe Verdi "praised the broad curves of Bellini's melody: 'there are extremely long melodies as no-one else had ever made before'." Ī large amount of what is known about Bellini's life and his activities comes from surviving letters-except for a short period-which were written over his lifetime to his friend Francesco Florimo, whom he had met as a fellow student in Naples and with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini ( Italian: ( listen) 3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Sicilian opera composer, who was known for his long-flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania".
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