Nadine Sierra stars in the company’s new production, thoughtfully directed by Rolando Villazón, of Bellini’s opera about a woman coming up against the strictures of a Swiss village.
By
Heidi Waleson
Oct. 8, 2025 at 5:13 pm ET
Nadine Sierra in ‘La Sonnambula.’ PHOTO: MARTY SOHL/MET OPERA
New York
For the new Metropolitan Opera production of Vincenzo Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” (1831), which opened on Monday, tenor-turned-director Rolando Villazón came up with a concept that dealt thoughtfully and coherently with the sexism and absurdity of Felice Romani’s libretto and allowed its central character to grow. The setting is still a Swiss alpine hamlet, but the villagers are all members of some puritanical sect and its sleepwalking heroine, Amina, has longings that transcend its limits.
The point is made through Johannes Leiacker’s semi-abstract set, a confining white wall that protects the community from a wilderness of mountains and glaciers that looms above it (projections are by Renaud Rubiano). It is emphasized by Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s forbidding costumes—the chorus members wear dark, plain, body-covering clothes (including knickerbockers for the men) and headgear that read as quasi-Amish. As directed by Mr. Villazón, the chorus, which plays a major role in the opera, is not benign: Its goal is to subsume Amina and suppress rebellion. Even the early joyful ensembles celebrating Amina’s betrothal to Elvino have an edge: The community members line up rigidly and Alessio, usually the hapless suitor of the innkeeper Lisa, is the cassock-clad authoritarian boss, passing out song sheets, conducting the paeans, and smacking small children who try to dance. The betrothal itself is a choreographed ritual of gestures.
Amina’s sleepwalking—a concept inconceivable to the villagers, who think the town is haunted—gets her in trouble, and is here a manifestation of her “otherness” and innate resistance to the community’s rigidity. Niara Hardister, a dancer (Leah Hausman did the choreography), serves as her liberated alter ego beyond the community walls and lighting designer Donald Holder casts a cool, otherworldly light on the sleepwalking scenes, which are the overt representations of her subconscious desires.
This stark dichotomy puts Amina, stunningly sung and acted by Nadine Sierra, into high relief on stage. There’s the pink shawl that keeps getting taken away from her, and the dance-like physicality of her movements. Most critically, the hint of metal in Ms. Sierra’s rich, ebullient soprano suggests that there’s some steel underneath those uninhibited florid roulades; for all Amina’s innocence and vulnerability in the beginning, we can hear her potential for growth.
As a result, the flimsy narrative gets more bite. A stranger (who turns out to be the local nobleman, long missing) arrives and flirts with Amina after the betrothal, making Elvino jealous. Amina’s sleepwalking lands her in a compromising position and she is condemned by the community and rejected by Elvino until the revelation of her sleepwalking habit proves her innocent. In this production, the stranger brings outside ideas to this closed environment—he arrives by climbing down a ladder set against the wall and has a suitcase full of unfamiliar objects like a globe, a newspaper and a camera. The chorus’s wild vacillations—celebrating Amina, then punishing her and then trying to clear her name—fit with their efforts to bring her to heel. Logically, things can’t just go back to the way they were, and Mr. Villazón’s astute staging of the happy ending has a convincingly modern twist; the abandon of the last triumphant high note in Ms. Sierra’s final cabaletta signals her hard-won freedom.
It also made sense that Xabier Anduaga’s powerful, somewhat forced tenor made Elvino into a bit of a prig; the love duets, lushly sung, were all about Ms. Sierra’s vocal warmth and generosity and his resistance to touch. Soprano Sydney Mancasola brought spice to Lisa, Elvino’s irritable ex-girlfriend, and bass Alexander Vinogradovwas persuasive as the suspect outsider and rationalist. Rich-voiced mezzo Deborah Nansteel gave Teresa, Amina’s adoptive mother, a character arc: When the community turned against Amina, she broke ranks to shield her daughter. Bass-baritone Nicholas Newton, making his debut, was amusingly conflicted as Alessio—lording it over the ensemble (the superb Met chorus) and cowed by Lisa. Riccardo Frizza’s fluid conducting drew out the score’s long bel canto lines and limned its propulsive rhythmic structure, and his flexible support of the singers made every aria and ensemble breathe and soar.
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