Bellini had the gift for creating and spinning a simple line into utterly fluid melody, and this song brings together that simplicity and lyricism with supreme efficiency. Like Gluck, another master of those gifts, Bellini successfully created a new direction for vocal music, using such tools as these.

It opens with subdued minor chords, the accompaniment switching to simple arpeggios as the vocal line begins, in a way that could have been a direct model for Gabriel Faure's songs. The vocal line is largely scalar, only becoming expansive and emphatic j ust before the end, before returning to the simplicity of the opening, in the last bars.

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Pietro Metastasio's libretti are today associated almost exclusively with Baroque and early Classical settings, but they retained some of their popularity even into the early Romantic period, with both Rossini and Bellini utilizing them. This is one of the most operatic of Bellini's songs, with more than a few devices much more frequently found in arias than in his songs.

The piece opens with a hurried piano introduction that immediately sets a theatrical mood, with dramatic chords. The vocal melody is first taken at a quick pace and is generally simple, though it ends with a few rather theatrical reprises with dramatic changes of dynamics and tempo. The da capo repetition ends with overtly operatic touches from both voice and accompaniment, including the traditional operatic thundering flourish of an ending from the piano.

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This arietta was composed in Milan between 1827 and 1829. It was published by both Ricordi and Girard, and the melody was reused by the composer in his opera Norma. It occurs in Act I in Pollione's aria Sol promessa al Dio tu fosti. The poem is about the complete despair of the lover, who hopes for death if only it will cause the beloved to strew flowers on his grave. But he doesn't even hope for that much. The continuous melody is made up of recurring melodic cells which expand at the end as the singer longs for death.

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Malinconia, ninfa gentile was one of several songs composed during the composer's years in Milan. It belongs to a group of songs published by Ricordi as a set of "sei ariette." It is the first of a group of six songs organized by key, alternating between major and minor mode. The verses were possibly by Ippolito Pindemonte. The song is short and to the point, highly dramatic and operatic in its conception. The piano accompaniment imitates an opera orchestra, establishing the mood but leaving the solo voice in the foreground. The poem is a hymn to the nymph Melancholy, and has a pastoral setting that is belied by the passionate, nineteenth-century Romantic vocal writing. However one can hear the murmur of the brook in the piano accompaniment, even as the voice soars to its dramatic conclusion.

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Vanne, o rosa was composed in Milan probably in 1829. It was published by Ricordi as part of a set of "sei ariette." The text is a coy love poem in which the writer envies the rose that sits on his beloved's breast. It is by Pietro Metastasio, the eighteenth-century poet renowned for serious-opera libretti. His poetry was completely foreign to the conceptions of the Romantic era, having been written in a textually simpler time. The setting is Arcadia, and Bellini imbues the words with the complex passions of the Romantic ethos. Bellini's vacillations between major and minor and his expressive inflections and embellishments give the song a passionate character. It is not just a song of idle flirtation and love but contains a certain sadness and driven yearning, as the rose fades from envy, and the lover retreats out of love.

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Almen, se non poss'io was published by Ricordi as part of a group of "sei ariette." They are organized by key, and alternate between major and minor modes. Almen, which ends with a showy cadenza, is the fourth song. The song is quiet, with winding roulades and romantic lyricism. The lover is bequeathing her beloved to another whom love already binds to him. The setting is simple and short, ending with elaborate fioratura.

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