A masterpiece of
Vincenzo Bellini
I Capuleti e i Montecchi
On 16 March 1833 when the opera Beatrice di Tenda by the 32-year-old Vincenzo Bellini was given its world premiere in the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, shouts of “Norma! Norma!” were heard during one of the arias. In this case suspicions that the composer had re-worked some music from his successful opera written barely two years beforehand were unfounded and yet Bellini did follow the centuries-old practice of using, where necessary, pieces from earlier works. For instance, in I Capuleti e i Montecchi he frequently referred to Zaira and at one point also to what was more or less a test piece for him Adelson e Savini, performed in 1825 in Naples where Vincenzo Bellini, who was born in 1801 in Catania, Sicily, had studied for six years at the Real Collegio di Musica.
Bellini had two reasons for making such extensive use of existing music.
At the beginning of 1830 he was in Venice and stepping in at short notice
for the unreliable maestro Pacini, Bellini was under enormous pressure
of time because this new work had to be completed in only six weeks. On
the other hand Zaira, composed in 1829 for the Teatro Ducale in Parma,
was more or less unknown, performed only a few times and never published.
Such borrowing from other works takes away nothing of the beauty of the
genuine Bellini sound in I Capuleti; the libretto is by Felice Romani,
with whom Bellini had worked before and who made several adaptations of
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
In contrast to the intensive belcanto and expression of feeling in sweeping
melodies such as at Romeo’s appearance before the hostile Capulets,
Giulietta’s painful romanza, the arias or duets of them both, the
other three solo roles – Romeo’s rival Tebaldo (tenor), the
doctor Lorenzo (bass) and Giulietta’s father Capellio (bass) –
are mostly only supporting roles that carry the action forward. To be
sure the introductory symphony is very conventional and the recitatives
are often only functional, nothing more. Yet the differentiated orchestration,
the insistent rhythms, the dramatic links between choruses, ensembles
and solos in effective unisono passages and all the popular music evoking
sounds of the street are all permeated by an Italian flair that reveals
Bellini, five years before his early death, to be the master of his metier
and a composer who knew how to please audiences.
Herbert Glossner
Vincenzo Bellini
I CAPULETI E I MONTECCHI
Concert performance
Conductor Ivor Bolton • Chorus master Rupert Huber
Giulietta Anna Netrebko • Romeo Daniela Barcellona • Tebaldo Joseph Calleja • Capellio Dan Dumitrescu • Lorenzo Chester Patton
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra
18 and 21 August, 8 p.m.
Grosses Festspielhaus
Telephone +43 (0) 662 8045-500
Telefax +43 (0) 662 8045-555
E-mail: info@salzburgfestival.at
Production photos © Karl Forster