La sonnambula, Bellini's seventh opera, is a pinnacle of Italian bel canto. Premiered in 1831, it cemented the composer's reputation and raised the vocal demands, especially for the lead role. Bárbara Lluch's production, with its gothic atmosphere and feminist message, arrives at the Liceu with the great soprano Nadine Sierra.
La sonnambula is not what it seems. A first encounter with its music and plot tells us that it is an opera built on melodies of captivating beauty and radiant arrangements, and that it ends happily when, after a misunderstanding is resolved, the protagonist can marry the man she loves. But beneath the surface of this initial impression, which tells us the opera is an harmless comedy, there are several aspects that could be considered unsettling. One is common in the Romantic period: Amina, who is sleepwalking and unconsciously walks at night, terrifies the village where she lives, as the neighbors believe she is a ghost. This detail is typical of Gothic literature, very popular at the time, and adds a slight supernatural touch to the story. But the other detail, more than romantic, could be said to be timeless: Amina, who appears in dreams in Count Rodolfo's room and whom he tries to kiss, is accused, without the right to defend herself, of being knowingly unfaithful to her fiancé, Elvino. That is, a moral violence is exerted on her, leaving the young woman helpless, a victim of a society —patriarchal and irrational in equal parts— that condemns her without the right to defend herself.
"Based on her personal experience, Bárbara Lluch sympathizes with the protagonist of the opera and reflects on the violence that society exerts on vulnerable individuals."
In her production, which has been co-produced by the Teatro Real in Madrid, the New National Theatre in Tokyo, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, and the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Bárbara Lluch places essential value on these two underlying aspects. On one hand, the Barcelona-based stage director envelops the story of La sonnambula with a layer of mystery, nocturnal atmosphere, and supernatural presence. Although much of the opera's action unfolds during the day, Lluch always chooses moments when light allows darkness to seep through, aiming to capture —with lighting rich in red textures and shadowed points, resembling a Renaissance chiaroscuro designed by Urs Schönebaum— that chilling sensation always associated with night in horror literature. Furthermore, the protagonist is always surrounded by sinister characters —half man, half beast, like fauns and other mythological beings— who represent her inner demons, because, as she is unaware of her sleepwalking, she lives without ever having the clarity of someone capable of distinguishing wakefulness from sleep.
Amina's inner demons are represented on stage by the dancers of the Metamorphosis Dance company, through a choreography designed by Iratxe Ansa and Igor Bacovich, which, in addition to providing dynamism and tension to the staging —lowering the comedic tone to take the development to the edge of a psychological thriller, as if it were a Brian De Palma film—, also engages in a dialogue with the opera's own story. When Bellini decided to create the piece, he was inspired by a comedy by Eugène Scribe that had been transformed into a comic ballet in 1828, La somnanbule ou l’arrivée d’un nouveau seigneur. There is no evidence that the first performances of the opera included a ballet —a convention in France, but not in Milan— but in her production, Lluch recovers this link between the original version of the story, now largely forgotten, and its transformation into Bellini's opera through the reworking by the librettist Felice Romani, who placed great emphasis on the supernatural aspect of the ghost and the lynching of the defenseless Amina by the village.
"The production presents an aesthetic inspired by Gothic imagery, with nocturnal settings typical of a nightmare and lighting that reinforces the chiaroscuro aesthetic."
It is this second aspect —the tension between prejudice and truth, between acting on impulse or rationally— that Lluch emphasizes in this production. In this version of La sonnambula, Amina is a clear victim of an unthinking society that condemns her unilaterally without the right to reply: first, because she is a woman —in no case is Count Rodolfo accused of acting indecently, the guilty one is always Amina, accused of infidelity— and second, because it is easier to join the judgment passed by the crowd than to use a rational method to understand the issues, a way of acting that still occurs, where the presumption of innocence seems non-existent and resistance is surrendered to the vengeful push of the mob on social media.
According to Bárbara Lluch, Amina is a helpless victim, and her first impulse when she began preparing her version of the opera was to support her. As she explained in several interviews after the production went through Madrid and Tokyo, it was based on her personal experience that she guided the work in this direction. In the past, Lluch explained, she too suffered the consequences of a toxic relationship in which, due to immaturity and fear of society’s judgment, she inflicted a harsh and unnecessary punishment on herself, leading to physical disorders and addictions, which, fortunately, she has now left behind —thanks, among other factors, to the healing power of opera as a profession—. Thus, her version of La sonnambula unfolds like a gothic nightmare, in which the truly terrifying aspect is not the ghost, but the monster that society becomes when it judges without evidence, without considering the harmful consequences of acting with prejudice and thoughtlessness against a helpless person.