BELLINI, Vincenzo
b Catania, Sicily, 3 November 1801
d Puteaux, near Paris, 28 September 1835, aged thirty-three

He was born of a musical family. From an early age he studied piano under his father, who was himself a composer. A priest gave him the rudiments of schooling, and at the age of seven he studied Latin, modern languages, rhetoric and philosophy. He went to Naples in 1819 to study at the Real Conservatorio di Musica at the expense of a Sicilian nobleman. The Conservatorio arranged for their student to stage his first opera, Adelson e Salvina, in 1825, as a result of which he was given the libretto for an opera for La Scala, Milan, where he mainly lived from 1827 to 1833. In 1830 he had the first attack of gastro-enteritis which was to kill him five years later, and he spent the summer of that year convalescing on Lake Como. 1833 saw him in London to rehearse three of his operas; then to Paris, where he was made a Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur. He was planning to marry at the time of his death.
1825 (24)
Adelson e Salvina, opera
Bianca e Fernando, opera
1827 (26)
Il Pirata, opera
1829 (28)
La Straniera, opera
Zaira, opera
1830 (29)
I Capuleti ed I Montecchi, opera
1831 (30)
La Sonnambula, opera
Norma, opera
1833 (32)
Beatrice di Tenda, opera
1835 (34)
I Puritani, opera