~The "Glass Shatterers!" series focuses on sopranos who sustain High F, or sing higher.

THE SONGBIRD: Lucia Aliberti was born in Messina, Sicily. She studied piano, composition, conducting, and singing at the Conservatory, followed by studies in Rome, Salzburg, and Berlin. Aliberti's career began in 1979 in Spoleto as Amina, after winning the vocal prize there the year before. She made her La Scala debut as Elisa in Mozart's "Il Re Pastore" in 1980 -- other roles in Milan were Nannetta, Lucia, Norina, Beatrice, Amina, Bellini's Giulietta, and Handel's Dalinda. She stepped in as Lucia in Geneva in 1982, a role she first sang in Berlin in 1983. Gilda in Vienna followed in 1984. Aliberti has taken her specialty in the bel canto works to opera houses and concert halls around the world including London, New York, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Salzburg, Amsterdam, Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Dresden, Leipzig, Bonn, Hannover, Köln, Zurich, Genève, Lausanne, Stockholm, Helsinki, Brussels, Paris, Marseille, Budapest, Warsaw, Madrid, Bilbao, Tokyo, Osaka, Bangkok, Shanghai, Miami, Seoul, Wexford, Liverpool, Glyndebourne, Edinburgh, Caracas, Monte Carlo, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Venice, Pesaro, Trieste, and many others. Aliberti studied piano and other musical instruments (guitar, accordion, violin, mandolin), and had composed pieces for piano, clarinet, flute, and voice.

THE MUSIC: Bellini's "La Sonnambula" is a gem in the sub-genre of sentimental Italian opera semiseria. The opera premiered in Milan in 1831 with Giuditta Pasta as Amina, the sleepwalking character referred to in the title. The role is long and contains bel canto music demanding both aching lyricism and florid fireworks. The opera culminates with an exquisite final scene that has the shape of a bel canto mad scene, but here Amina has not lost her mind -- she is merely in a melancholy trance due to her sleepwalking. When Amina wakes up and realizes all is well, she launches into a bouncy and joyful cabaletta, "Ah, non giunge."

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