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Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini ( November 3 , 1801 – September 23 , 1835 ) was an Italian Opera Composer . Known for his flowing melodic line, Bellini was the quintessential composer of Bel Canto opera. __NOTOC__ LIFE Born in Catania , Sicily , Italy, Bellini was a child prodigy from a highly musical family and legend has it he could sing an air of Fioravanti at eighteen months, began studying Music Theory at two, the Piano at three, and by the age of five could play well. His first composition dates from his sixth year. Regardless of the veracity of these claims, it is certain that Bellini grew up in a musical household and that a career as a musician was never in doubt. Having learned from his grandfather, Bellini left provincial Catania in June 1819 to study at the conservatory in , leading to an offer from the impresario Barbaia for an opera at La Scala . '' Il Pirata '' was a resounding immediate success and began Bellini's faithful and fruitful collaboration with the librettist and poet Felice Romani , and cemented his friendship with his favored tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini , who had sung in ''Bianca e Gernando''. Bellini spent the next years, 1827–33 in Milan, where all doors were open to him. Supported solely by his opera commissions, for '' La Straniera '' (1828) was even more successful than ''Il pirata'', sparking controversy in the press for its new style and its restless harmonic shifts into remote keys, he showed the taste for social life and the Dandy ism that Heinrich Heine emphasized in his literary portrait of Bellini (''Florentinische Nächte'', 1837). Opening a new theater in Parma , his '' Zaira '' (1829) was a failure at the Teatro Ducale, but Venice welcomed '' I Capuleti E I Montecchi '', which was based on the same Italian sources as Shakespeare 's '' Romeo And Juliet ''. The next five years were triumphant, cut short by Bellini's premature death. Bellini died in Puteaux , near Paris of acute inflammation of the intestine, and was buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise , Paris; his remains were removed to the cathedral of Catania in 1876. The Museo Belliniano, Catania, preserves memorabilia and scores. WORKS Bellini is best known for his opera '' in the early 1920s, and later Joan Sutherland in the 1950s and 1960s. Maria Callas was the famous Norma of the postwar period; she performed it many times and recorded it in the studio twice. Operas
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