Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in December are:
27 November – 1 December Rorem
4-8 December Christmas in the Middle Ages
11-15 December Humperdinck
18-22 December A Vaughan Williams Christmas
25-29 December Greatest Showstoppers
Like so many successful composers before and after him, the young Vincenzo Bellini found music to be a golden ticket – the passport out of a restricted life to travel opportunities, wealth and a broadening of cultural horizons. There was no family money: Bellini’s immediate forefathers were musicians too, but of the jobbing kind, more craftsmen than artists. Playing the organ, teaching and, in his grandfather’s case, composing music in the service of a local nobleman gave them an influence that extended no further than the local community in Catania, Sicily. The surrounding hills were alive with the sound of folksong, and of course the church required a never-ending supply of quotidian liturgical music, but for an aspiring opera composer, opportunities were few. Vincenzo showed exceptional musical promise, however, and a petition to the local council resulted in him being granted the funds to take up a place at the Naples Conservatoire, where his grandfather had studied before him.
