“Ah, I did not think I admired you So soon extinct, O flower You passed as the love That one day only lasted” (Amina, Act II)
This is the famous soprano aria from La Sonnambula (The Sleep-walker), a dramatic opera in two acts set to music by Vincenzo Bellini based on the libretto by Felice Romani. Composed in just two months by the composer from Catania while he was on Lake Como, it was modified by Felice Romani as far as the subject is concerned, of a bucolic nature, through the elimination of the scene of the final identification, in which Count Rodolfo should have to reveal himself as Amina’s natural father.
How then is the famous work connected to Asti? Through the presence, in the permanent collections of Palazzo Mazzetti, of the sketch in terracotta made from 1876 to 1879 depicting the protagonist: La Sonnambula, (the Sleep-walker) or Amina. The sculpture was created by Giulio Monteverde, an artist and senator in 1889, as well as a Commander of the Crown of Italy.
As an artist, Monteverde was inspired by the anecdotal taste and realism, with the intention of concretizing the positivist idea of progress. Among the most frequently treated themes are those of childhood, genius, sensuality and magnetism, and the exaltation of the human type of the scientist.
Monteverde devoted himself, in the first half of the 1870s, to optic-perceptual research, mainly involving sketching; this experimental phase, characterized by rapidity, is more careful to light than to precision of drawing. Monteverde sometimes prefers modeling done by superimposition of matter rather than by subtraction. The sketch preserved on the second floor of Palazzo Mazzetti technically seems to fall right into this stylistic period and shows a figure in a twist, with hands clasped to her chest and a peasant dress frayed at the bottom.
The connections of the work La Sonnambula with Asti do not end there, however.
In fact, in the Guglielminetti Museum, located in the historical cellars of Palazzo Alfieri, you can discover the model for the set design dedicated to Bellini’s opera created by the master Eugenio Guglielminetti. From the 1970s the artist from Asti began to use painted backdrops and luminescent veils for opera, with some realistic quotations alternating with surreal reflections. The project in question therefore traces exactly these characteristics that, together with skillfully managed lighting, give to the opera evocative atmospheres.
Asti discovers another important connection, then: after the one with cinema through the figure of the director Pastrone, and the one with tragedy through Vittorio Alfieri, comes the one with opera thanks to “La Sonnambula.”
