Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Sans stars, The Met’s illuminating new staging of LA SONNAMBULA still mines the riches of Bellini’s score

• By drediman
• October 16, 2025
• No Comments

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to catch up with the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Bellini’s La Sonnambula. Marketed as a vehicle for two of today’s most exciting opera stars — acclaimed soprano Nadine Sierra and tenor Xabier Anduag (whose swoon-worthy 2023 Met debut in L’Elisir d’Amore turned many heads) — the production seemed poised to eclipse the work’s absurd story with thrilling singing. Speaking of the plot, it concerns one Amina, a beloved young woman whose tendency to sleepwalk (!) gets her into romantic troubles with her fiancée Elvino.

Unfortunately, on the night I attended, the production’s aforementioned stars were both indisposed, much to the dismay of the paying Met audience. Although her performance began unremarkably, soprano Alexandra Nowakowski as Amina opened up slowly and eventually delivered a lovely, convincingly girlish performance that conveyed a strong dramatic arc. Although her voice doesn’t quite have the heft of her colleagues, she attacked Bellini’s notoriously tricky vocal writing with intelligence and a commitment to the character. As Elvino, established tenor Lawrence Brownlee (who is also appearing in the Met’s revival of La Fille du Régiment and the company’s new production of I Puritani in the upcoming months) co-saved the day with a confident performance that brought — alongside bass Alexander Vinogradov and soprano Sydney Mancasola, both sterling, as the visiting Count Rodolfo and the scheming innkeeper Lisa, respectively — considerable vocal luster to the evening. In the pit, conductor Riccardo Frizza led an ideally paced orchestral performance, beautifully mining the riches of the score.

As directed by opera star-turned-opera director Rolando Villazón, the absurdly-plotted opera has been restored to its original setting of the Swiss Alps, which works to suggest the closed-minded, puritanically judgmental mentality of Amina’s community — a reconsideration that affects the heroine’s character motivations and ultimately the outcome of the opera (no spoilers here). Overall, the staging is smart and illuminating — a stylishly surreal, cleanly staged production that puts the focus squarely on Bellini’s ravishing bel canto score and the fundamental relationships between the characters, thereby downplaying the more incredulous aspects of the story. Villazón also centrally features the superb Met Chorus — as the community under whose gaze the proceedings transpire — effectively becoming a defining character in the opera.

RECOMMENDED

LA SONNAMBULA
Opera
The Metropolitan Opera
2 hours, 50 minutes (with one intermission)
In repertory through November 1