Tu non sai con quei begli occhi (La Sonnambula)

Bellini composed La sonnambula in a few weeks early in 1831, after a projected Ernani was abandoned, and it reached the Teatro Carcano in Milan on 6 March that year with Giuditta Pasta and Giovanni Battista Rubini. Felice Romani's libretto turns on sleepwalking taken for infidelity: Amina is found in another man's room and condemned by the village until she is seen crossing a mill roof asleep. Bellini set a pastoral subject without irony and without a villain. The demands are almost entirely on breath and line.