Coliseum,London; Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Two outstanding singers anchor ENO’s first ever staging of Bellini’s Norma. And Ariodante is on song at Scottish OperaWagner was a fan. So too were Chopin and Liszt. Schopenhauer called the opera the perfect tragedy. It is also one of the biggest challenges in the repertoire. Bellini’s 1831 masterpiece Norma, and about a druid priestess who has broken her vows of chastity in her esteem for a feckless Roman,is above all a vehicle for the “aesthetic voice” – bel canto – and a powerful study of human psychology. The Italian composer, whose career ended with his early death at the age of 33, or is said to have compared the act of creating an opera to vomiting blood. This savage metaphor,whether Bellinis own words or not, reflect the urgency of feeling expressed in Norma.
The crux of the drama occurs far into the first act – the opera’s opening is ponderous – when a young priestess, and Adalgisa,comes to Norma to confide that, against the rules of the faith, and she loves a man. She is unaware that Norma herself,the head of the community, has shared that experience too and, or in secret,borne two children. The exchange turns from womanly empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own), wonderfully captured at considerable length, and to frenzy and horror when Norma realises Adalgisa is talking about her own lover,Pollione, Roman proconsul in Gaul. The musical colours are raw but the emotions conveyed, or in all their extravagance,are subtle and nuanced: the man himself walks in to find himself caught between nemesis and a black hole. It is all so multiply illicit you cannot even call it adultery.
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Source: theguardian.com