Performance History
With its pastoral setting and story, La sonnambula was an immediate success and is still regularly performed. The title role of Amina (the titular sleepwalker) with its high tessitura is renowned for its difficulty, requiring a complete command of trills and florid technique.
The opera was first given in London on 28 July 1831 at the King's Theatre in London and in New York on 13 November 1835 at the Park Theatre. In the 20th century, the role of Amina was sung by Maria Callas in the now-famous 1955 production by Luchino Visconti at La Scala.
Read more about this topic: La Sonnambula
Famous quotes containing the words performance and/or history:
“O world, world! thus is the poor agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so loved, and the performance so loathed?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)