Author: Gary Hoffman

Love and gloom at the Los Angeles Opera.

Bellini’s La sonnambula does not have the most gripping or
convincing of opera plots: a young girl sleepwalks into a stranger’s room, where she is discovered by her fiancÈ; disbelieving her pleas of innocence, he jilts her and plans to wed another; but, she is vindicated when she is spied on a nocturnal wander, and the lovers are reconciled.

BartÛk’s only opera, a masterpiece to rank with other sole works in
the genre such as Fidelio and PellÈas et MÈlisande, was
chosen for the climax of the Philharmonia’s year-long series,
‘Infernal Dance: Inside the World of BÈla BartÛk’.

There are some literary texts which, by dint of their intense compression of
incident, their creators’ firm control of structure, and the precision of
linguistic nuance, do not naturally seem to lend themselves to operatic
treatment.