Adelson e Salvini

Vincenzo Bellini
Operas Adelson e Salvini (1825) Bianca e Fernando (1826) Il pirata (1827) La straniera (1829) Zaira (1829) I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830) La sonnambula (1831) Norma (1831) Beatrice di Tenda (1833) I puritani (1835)
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Adelson e Salvini (Adelson and Salvini) is a three act opera semiseria composed by Vincenzo Bellini from a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola. The opera was based on the 1772 novel Épreuves du Sentiment by François-Thomas-Marie de Baculard d'Arnaud, and it draws on a previously performed play by Prospère Delamare.

Composition history

Bellini's first opera was written as his final project at the Naples San Sebastiano Conservatory, when the composer was 23 years old. It was the custom at the Conservatory to introduce promising students to the public with a dramatic work. Bellini styled his project an opera semiseria and it was first performed at the Teatro del Conservatorio di San Sebastiano in Naples on 12 February 1825.^[1] Various revisions were undertaking "with a view to professional staging", but it was never performed.^[1]

Performance history

Bellini's score does not bring out much of the humor of the piece. Nevertheless, the work was so popular among the Conservatory's student audience that it was performed every Sunday for a year.

It was successful enough to generate a commission from the royal court, and it captured the interest of the impresario Domenico Barbaja of the San Carlo Opera, who launched Bellini's career, commissioning him to write his next work, Bianca e Gernando (1826), which was revised two years later as Bianca e Fernando. Although much influenced by the music of Gioacchino Rossini, this early piece exhibits some of the characteristic tuneful style and delicate vocal line that Bellini achieved in his mature works and the composer used some of the music from the opera in later works.^[1]

Bellini greatly revised the opera for another production in 1829, and later revised it further. However, the first professional production ^[2]was not given for over one hundred years at the Teatro Metropolitan in Belliini's home town of Catania on 6 November 1985^[1]. Domenico De Meo further revised and edited the score of Adelson to prepare it for a 1992 production at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, Sicily. The following year, the Italian label Nuova Era issued Adelson e Salvini on two compact discs.

Roles

Synopsis

Place: Ireland

Time: 17th century

The story concerns the friendship of the Anglo-Irish Lord Adelson with a young Italian painter, Salvini, who falls in love with Nelly, the beautiful fiancé of the wealthy and powerful Adelson. The plot proceeds to a curiously murderous twist.

Recordings

References

Notes

Cited sources

• Holden, Amanda (ed.), The New Penguin Opera Guide, New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001. ISBN 0-14-029312-4
• Rosselli, John, The Life of Bellini, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-46781-0

Other sources

• Osborne, Charles, The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1994 ISBN 0-931340-71-3

External links

• Adelson e Salvini Text of Acts 1 and 2 of the opera, in the original Italian. Subscription service. Retrieved 13 June 2010
• Information about the background of the opera on website of WWUH-fm, Hartford, CT, 1998 Retrieved 13 June 2010