La Sonnambula by VINCENZO BELLINI

People can dream up some pretty amazing excuses when they’re caught breaking the rules. Sometimes it seems like they must have raided the liquor cabinet, or scrambled their medications. How else could they concoct such outlandish stories - such pathetic attempts to delay the inevitable.

Examples of this range from the hilarious, to the ridiculous, to some that are downright disturbing. Like that case where a murderer got off with a pretty light sentence after claiming that sugary junk food led him to commit a hate crime. Or the rationale Alan Dershowitz has called the “abuse excuse.” You know, the one that says, “I’ve had a hard life; things have happened to me that shouldn’t be allowed to happen to anyone; therefore, I should be able to get away with anything I want.” That one almost worked for those brothers in California who said that shotgunning their parents was OK, because the folks had abused both kids since early childhood.

Ridiculous excuses might include the bigtime football owner who tried to excuse fleeing an officer with a speeding ticket by saying he was late -- to church. Or the rock group who trashed their dressing room because, contrary to their contract, there were brown M&M’s in the candy dish. Horror of horrors.

Funny excuses? Well, there was the time Cheech and Chong said the reason their car was full of pot was that they’d found the stuff, and were turning it in to the cops. Or Bill Cosby’s story about he and his brother horsing around and breaking a bed slat, then telling Dad that a strange, shoeless man jumped up and down on the bed after climbing in a window.

And then there are excuses like the one in this week’s opera, LA SONNAMBULA, when a young woman, engaged to be married, needs a logical reason for getting caught in the wrong man’s bed. The opera’s a comedy, and her rationale sounds a bit farfetched - ridiclous, even. But it also turns out to be true. The poor girl was sleepwalking, of course!

Would you buy that one if it was your fiance? Well, this week on At the Opera, host Lou Santacroce rings up an expert on sleep disorders, Dr. Mark Mohowald, and he tells us it’s perfectly normal behavior. Sleepwalking, he says, has even been a successful defense in murder trials! Lou also talks to Eve Queler, who conducts our performance of LA SONNAMBULA, about Bellini’s stellar vocal writing. And regular guest Thomson Smillie shows us that there’s more to this “bel canto” opera than just “beautiful singing.” It’s all a prelude to the opera itself, in a performance by OPERA ORCHESTRA OF NEW YORK from Carnegie Hall, coming up on NPR World of Opera, with Steve Curwood.

Listen as Lou talks with Dr. Mark Mohowald about sleep walking and how Bellini's handling of the subject may not be at all farfetched. (Requires the free RealPlayer 5.0 or higher. You can also listen with a 14.4 connection.)



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