Some opera plots are so preposterous that their setting hardly matters. At first blush, Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” seems to be one of them: On the eve of her wedding, a young woman sleepwalks into another man’s room, prompting her fiancé to call off the engagement until she sleepwalks her way back into his heart.
Bellini’s librettist, Felice Romani, adapted the story in 1831 from a ballet-pantomime by Eugène Scribe, and shifted the action from rural France to Switzerland. What harm can come if modern directors move it again? But the tenor-turned-director Rolando Villazón’s lucid and thrillingly sung new production of “La Sonnambula” for the Metropolitan Opera, which opened on Monday, makes a persuasive case for restoring it to an Alpine village under snow-capped peaks that loom both virginal and wild.
The soprano Nadine Sierra was vocally resplendent as Amina (the sleepwalker) in a performance that flickered between goofy charm and fiery intensity, and made the technical acrobatics of her part sound almost conversational. As Elvino, the Spanish tenor Xabier Anduaga was an outstanding match for both her natural acting and bel canto fluency. Their first-act reconciliation duet, after a jealous outburst by Elvino, ended in a pianissimo of almost R-rated intimacy. Scene after scene revealed them as one of the most instinctively synergistic pairs on the Met stage today.
Villazón’s vision homes in on the liminal nature of “La Sonnambula,” which blends pathos and comedy, and hovers between waking and dreaming, superstition and science. The mountain appears as both a vehicle to the sublime and a barrier to social progress. When the curtain rises on a picture of a glacier, we see at once how slowly things change in this environment.
Johannes Leiacker’s two-tiered set, lit by Donald Holder, evokes a world of claustrophobic interiors and awe-inspiring vistas. With the help of Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s stiffly buttoned costumes, Villazón conjures a suffocatingly prim society led by Alessio (the glowing bass-baritone Nicholas Newton in his house debut), who enforces order with the sharp slaps of a ruler. Ringed by craggy peaks, the horizons of this hamlet feel so narrow, it is almost plausible that its inhabitants mistake a sleepwalker for a ghost.
Count Rodolfo, returning from cosmopolitan travels, is a voice of reason that is first met with fear. The bass Alexander Vinogradov sang this part with a plummy tone, leaning heavily into the Don Juan arrogance of his character. When he produces a globe, the villagers scatter like demons before a cross; when he reaches for a book to explain the phenomenon of sleepwalking, they kick it away in anger. In this world, Amina’s nocturnal wanderings feel like an escape.
Her nightly escapades are also a means of communion with her “shadow,” as Villazón suggests, borrowing a concept from the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Its incarnation is a dancing double (Niara Hardister) who floats and twirls amid the glaciers, beckoning Amina to break out of her confines.
While the villagers kept their hands chastely clasped, the two Aminas moved their arms with wide, fluid gestures, embodying something of Bellini’s liberated melodies with their graceful twists and emphatic surges. Amina’s double was most effective when she appeared organically connected to the score. In “Care compagne,” a virtuosic aria expressing Amina’s anticipation of her wedding, the dancer is summoned by a single ecstatic trill. Over time, though, the device grew distracting, pulling focus from Sierra’s magnetic presence.
Thankfully, the dancer stayed out of sight during the final sleepwalking scene that restores Amina’s innocence and ushers in the happy ending. In “Ah! non credea mirarti,” Sierra’s tone darkened with grief, her phrasing faltering at the edges like the trailing thoughts of a distracted mind. Bellini’s score creates a similar effect, with the orchestra drifting slightly out of sync with the voice, as if to remind us that Amina is not entirely there. Under Riccardo Frizza’s solicitous baton, the Met Orchestra played with a transparency that evidently liberated the singers.
In Elvino’s Act I aria “Prendi, l’anel ti dono,” a French horn haunted Anduaga’s line like a musical conscience. His tenor flows in endless legato, capable of thinning to a silken thread or blooming into ringing, plush fortissimos.
The soprano Sydney Mancasola made a pert and spirited Lisa, quick with jealousy, and Deborah Nansteel lent touching warmth to Teresa, the adoptive mother who here defies village gossips and wordlessly instructs her daughter to hold her head high. That mother-daughter relationship grounded this production, highlighting female solidarity against patriarchal strictures, and prevented Villazón’s symbolism from drifting into abstraction.
At the end of Amina’s giddy, vindicated final cabaletta, which Sierra dispatched with jubilant confidence and piercing high notes, the audience erupted. This “La Sonnambula” would have been worth cheering for the singing alone. But in Villazón’s staging, Bellini’s pastoral fantasy reveals unexpected riches. Connecting the dream world to the natural one, he shows that Amina’s redemption depends on owning the wildness she has been taught to repress.
La Sonnambula
Through Nov. 1 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org.
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