Classical Music | Soprano

Vincenzo Bellini

Malinconia, Ninfa gentile Play Play

Leah Partridge	Soprano
Anne Breeden	Piano

Recorded on 01/31/2006, uploaded on 01/19/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

On the centenary of Vincenzo Bellini’s death in 1935, Ricordi published a collection of fifteen songs by the composer titled Composizioni da Camera. Among those included were the Sei Ariette, which had previous been published by Ricordi in 1829. These six songs, composed in Bellini’s typical melancholic style and organized according to alternating major and minor keys, were composed while he was enjoying the success of his opera Il pirata at La Scala. Though the songs were forced to exist in the shadow of that work, they nevertheless helped aid the composer’s spreading fame.

First among the Sei Ariette is “Malinconia, ninfa gentile” (“Melancholy, gentle nymph”), a dramatic song which aptly sets the tone for the collection. The song’s text, a brief two stanza poem, was written by Ippolito Pindemonte, an aristocratic Italian poet of the late 18^th and early 19^th century. The piano accompaniment is rushing, like the murmuring of streams and fountains suggested by the text’s pastoral setting. It eloquently provides the dramatic background for the text, sounding something like a piano reduction of a full operatic setting, yet not obstructing the voice as the main vehicle of expressing the poet’s emotions. The vocal melody, on the other hand, is pressing and earnest and eventually soars to a dramatic climax before receding quietly into the song’s close. Joseph DuBose