Vincenzo Bellini was an Italian opera composer of the bel canto era, born in Catania, Sicily, and trained at the Real Collegio di Musica in Naples before establishing his career in Milan and Venice. His concise output centers on long, lyrical melodic lines and includes the operas Il pirata, La sonnambula, Norma, and I puritani, composed during a brief but intense career. He died in Puteaux, near Paris, in 1835 at the age of 33, from acute inflammation of the colon complicated by a liver abscess.

Bellini is regarded as one of the central figures of the bel canto tradition, admired in his own time and after by Verdi, Wagner, Liszt, and Chopin for the expressive purity of his melodic writing. Norma in particular remains a touchstone of the soprano repertoire, and his major operas continue to be staged regularly at leading opera houses worldwide, cementing his place among the essential composers of early nineteenth-century Italian opera.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenzo_Bellini