Paul Terracini   conductor

An Operantics production, presented as a concert performance, featuring

Joelene Griffith Amina
Michael Butchard Elvino
Christopher Nazarian Count Rodolfo
Jermaine Chau Teresa
Jessica Harper Lisa
Gerard Atkinson Alessio 

BELLINI  La sonnambula

Our first complete opera-in-concert performance presents La sonnambula (The Sleepwalker). Written near the end of Bellini’s short life, it is one of his best-known operas and a landmark work in the bel canto operatic repertoire.

Amina, an orphan, is about to be married to Elvino, a rich landowner, but her affections for him are rivalled by the unrequited love of Lisa, an inn-keeper. The festivities are interrupted by the unexpected return of Count Rodolfo, son of the late Lord of the village. When Amina, who sleepwalks, is found on the couch in the Count’s lodgings at the inn, Elvino is overcome by jealousy and rejects her. The suspicions aroused by a handkerchief dropped in the Count’s room are hard to shake off. Only when Amina, while sleepwalking again, is heard singing of her love for Elvino, does Elvino finally relent. He takes her in his arms, she awakens, and the wedding preparations resume.