Bel Canto: Romantic Opera Composer In The 19th-Century

Romantic Opera composers in the 19th-century often centered their works on spectacles that satisfied their novelty-seeking audiences in hopes of facilitating their success. A prominent style of Italian opera composition in the first half of the 19th-century is referred to as Bel Canto, a term literally meaning “beautiful singing.” These operas used intense emotion and dramatic circumstances to connect to the emotions of the audiences. A popular Bel Canto work, Vincenzo Bellini’s (1801-1835) La Sonnambula (1831), is a melodramatic opera in two acts. Felice Romani (1788-1865) wrote the libretto based on a ballet-pantomine, La somnambule, ou L’arrivée d’un nouveau seigneur, by Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) and J. P. Aumer (1774-1833). (Budden). Librettists gained interest in the popular topic of somnambulism because it was considered mysterious and it was a phenomenon that interested audiences. As one of the artistic reflections of Romantic era popular opinion, Bel Canto

Audiences at this time preferred to see images of frail women who inspired concern and pity rather than men who depicted animalistic episodes of insanity. Composers kept this mind by creating the sympathetic, insane female characters (Pipes). This research will use intellectual opinion regarding the cause of female mental illness during the 19th-century and Bellini’s La Sonnambula as a case report for the negative portrayal of women in Bel Canto operas. The female brain came into investigation in the 19th-century by phrenologists and neuroanatomists. Madness was understood as a strange female ailment, usually caused by excess sexuality if outside of wed-lock. Because of this, insanity became a feminine