Sleep therapist Dr Ian Smith on La Sonnambula

Bellini's views on somnanbulism are very much of his time – who thinks a sleepwalker is a phantom these days?At the performance of Bellini's opera I saw, something went wrong with the curtains: we were all sent trooping off to the bar while the curtains were fixed. The show went on but the suspension of disbelief necessary to follow the opera's rather ridiculous plot had been undermined.The premise is that a young woman, Amina, engaged to marry Elvino, sleepwalks into the bedroom of a man na...

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