Picture, if you will, a sleepwalker. Her name is Amina and she is betrothed to Elvino but is found asleep – much to her own surprise – in one Count Rodolfo’s room on the evening of her engagement. Accusing his distraught fiancée of infidelity, Elvino attempts to marry the local innkeeper, Lisa, instead. Alas, Elvino soon uncovers suggestions that Lisa, too, might have been romantically involved with Rodolfo. The Count – a lustful man, yes, but harmless – explains to an exasperated Elvino that Amina walks in her sleep, and that she is blameless. Elvino and Amina are reconciled. Fin.

^{Greta Bradman, Roxane Hislop, Jessica Pratt. All photos © Charlie Kinross}

Felice Romani’s libretto to Vincenzo Bellini’s La Sonnambula is as unlikely as it is entertaining, and that is precisely the point of this style of opera. Bel canto is most closely associated with early 19th-century Italian opera and the work of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. The genre fell out of fashion in the second half of the 19th century, dismissed as virtuosic but not particularly serious music. Berlioz complained that the “music of the Italians is a sensual pleasure and...