Monday, October 27, 4 p.m., Lakeside Little Theatre will inaugurate its 2025-26 opera season with a screening of New York’s Metropolitan Opera’s acclaimed production of Vincenzo Bellini’s “La Sonnambula.”
First performed in Milan in 1831, La Sonnambula tells the dramatic tale of love lost then regained. Amina, a young woman in a Swiss village, is a sleepwalker. On the eve of her wedding, she is found asleep in another man’s room, leading to inevitable accusations of infidelity and to her betrothed breaking their engagement. By the opera’s end, of course, after much angst and suffering, the truth comes out, and Amina’s honor is restored.
So important was this work that the phrase Ah! non credea mirarti / Sì presto estinto, o fiore (“I did not believe I would see you fade so soon, oh flower”) from Amina’s final aria is inscribed on Bellini’s tomb.
Soprano Nadine Sierra plays Amina, and Operaonline gushed that “What [Sierra] has achieved now with “La Sonnambula”... consecrates her as the new undisputed queen,” while Seenandheard-International called her performance “a triumph.”
Sung in Italian with English subtitles, “La Sonnambula” was filmed live at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House and will be experienced with LLT’s state-of-the-art projection, screen and sound system in its air-conditioned McIntosh Auditorium.
Tickets, 350 pesos, are available at lakesidelittletheatre.com and an hour before the show at the box office.