Buxton International Festival and ICI London present
A Special Evening of Music
With extracts from Vincenzo Bellini’s La Sonnambula
Buxton International Festival’s Artistic Director, Adrian Kelly, will join Chinese soprano, Ziyi Dai, and South African born bass-baritone, Simon Shibambu, (soloists from BIF’s production of La sonnambula, which will be performed as part of this year’s Buxton International Festival on 6-23 July) in a programme celebrating the work of Bellini and other leading Italian composers. Noted for its ambition and creativity, the evening will demonstrate the Festival’s innovative approach to the arts and how music can promote cultural collaboration across multiple boundaries.
This opera of jilted-love, jealousy and innocence-rewarded was Bellini’s first great masterpiece and remains his most important work, alongside Norma. It premiered in Milan in 1831 and became renowned for its exhilarating melodies and dazzling vocal pyrotechnics.
Amina is engaged to Elvino and everyone in the community, bar one, is looking forward to their wedding. When a mysterious stranger, Rodolfo, arrives his admiration for Amina provokes jealousy and misunderstanding. A crisis is reached when Amina is discovered in Rodolfo’s room late at night. She is in fact a sleepwalker, a somnambulist – but will Elvino believe her?