Norma.... The Ultimate Italian Opera
Jun 10 '07 (Updated Jun 16 '07)
The Bottom Line The best Italian opera has to offer. The girls rule.
Smorg’s Really Long Rambling on Vincenzo Bellini’s NORMA
Set to the libretto by Felice Romani based on the Louis-Alexandre Soumet’s tragedy Norma. This opera by the bel canto composer Vincenzo Bellini premiered at La Scala in Milan in December 1831.
CAST:
Norma ::: Druidess High Priestess (soprano)
Adalgisa ::: Young Druidess Priestess (soprano/ high-mezzo soprano)
Oroveso ::: Chief Druid, Norma’s father (bass)
Clotilde ::: Norma’s confidante (mezzo-soprano)
Pollione ::: Roman Proconsul in charge of Gaul (tenor)
Flavio ::: Roman friend of Pollione (tenor)
SYNOPSIS:
Set in Gaul (modern day France) during the Roman occupation around 50 BC. Act I opens in the sacred grove of the god Irminsul, where the discontented Druids and their chief Oroveso, have gathered to participate the moon rise when their high priestess Norma would debrief them on what the god dictates (aria & chorus, ‘Ite sul colle, o Druidi’). In the meantime, the Roman Proconsul Pollione and his friend Flavio, out for their usual patrol found themselves walking toward the grove while lost in their man-talk.
Pollione, being a hot blooded Italian, has found himself in a slowly boiling dilemma for having fallen out of love with Norma after having sired 2 secret children with her, and in love with her young friend Adalgisa instead. He now dreads the moment Norma will learn of his infidelity (duet & chorus, ‘Meco all’altar di Venere’). They are shooed away from the grove by the Druids as Norma approaches (chorus ‘Norma viene’). After announcing to the restless crowd that the time is not yet ripe to rebel against Rome, Norma prays yearningly for peace to the goddess of the moon (aria & chorus, ‘Casta diva’), promising her people that when the time is right, she herself would lead the revolt. Once the holy site is vacated, Adalgisa enters to pray for the strength to resist falling for Pollione (aria, ‘Deh Proteggimi, o Dio ’). Proving that the devil has perfect timing, Pollione walks in and in no time at all convinces her to violate her vow and elope with him to Rome, as he is being recalled by the Emperor (duet, ‘Eccola! Va’, mi lascia/ Va’, crudele’).
Norma, in the meantime, is confiding in her friend Clotilde of her distress over Pollione’s pending departure when the guilt-ridden Adalgisa comes looking for sympathetic ears about her romantic dilemma. Eager to help her young and (supposedly) innocent protogée, Norma resolves to release the youngster from her vows to spare her from the same tormented fate as hers (duet, ‘Ah! Si, fa’ core, e abbracciami’). Alas, Adalgisa then reveals that the suitor is none other than Pollione, who cements his own reputation for being punctual at making an untimely entrance by dropping in for a chat just then. It is not a happy trio (Perfido! Or basti! Fermati!) that they end the opera’s first Act with.
Act II opens to see the disillusioned Norma working up her courage to kill her children and herself to prevent Pollione from taking them with him. Motherly love prevents her from going through with the deed. Norma sends for Adalgisa, asking the younger woman to adopt her children and leave peacefully with Pollione. But Adalgisa has had a change of heart of her own and proclaims that she will only return to Pollione to convince him to return to Norma. The girls indulge in yet another love duet, Mira, o Norma/ si, fino all’ore estreme (this one even more consummated than the first, climaxing together in a ringing high C finish), in a joint resolution to not let any man come between them.
The restless Druids, meanwhile, have heard of Pollione’s recall and are agitating for war (chorus & aria, ‘Non parti?/ Guerrieri!’). Their wish is granted when Norma, once again irated from having found out that Pollione is plotting to kidnap and take Adalgisa with him, sounds the sacred gong signaling Irminsul’s approval for blood shed. The delighted Druids rally around her (the rousing ensemble/chorus, ‘Guerra, guerra!’), and demands a human sacrifice to the war god. Just then, Clotilde rushes in with the news that Pollione has been caught in the act of violating the sacred quarters of the Druid novices. Oroveso immediately demands his blood as the sacrificial victim, but Norma insists on a private audience with the prisoner first (ensemble, ‘E Pollion!). She tries in vain to get him to promise to give up Adalgisa in return for being allowed to live (duet, ‘Gia mi pasco ne’ tuoi sguardi/ Dammi quel ferro’), going so far as to threaten to kill their children. Foiled, she summons the Druids and announces that the sacrifice victim is to be a priestess who had broken her vows (ensemble, ‘Qual cor tradisi, qual cor perdesti). After naming the guilty woman as herself instead of Adalgisa, causing Pollione to finally see the errors of his own judgement and to beg for her forgiveness, the heroine entrusts her children to her father’s care before marching to her own death in the flaming pyre (ensemble, ‘Norma! Deh! Norma, scolpati!/ Deh! Non volerli vittime del mio fatale errore’).
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The most perfect of all 9 Bellini opera (and arguably any opera, for that matter), Norma is blessed with some of the most beautifully composed vocal music in all of opera. Bellini wasn’t a master of the orchestra like Mozart, Verdi, or Strauss was, but he was a melodic genius at making what little orchestral accompaniment he wrote count. His music is more elegant and softer than Rossini’s or Donizetti’s. While Rossini was given to indulging his audience with showpiece virtuoso arias and Donizetti preferred more dynamic and catchy vocal line with one note per singing syllable, Bellini had a thing for long drawn out (lung-busting) elegant singing phrases full of long and modulating melisma (each syllable of a word spans over many notes) that float over his pastel light orchestra highlighting.
Unlike other bel canto opera, Norma is also an intensely dramatic work where the music is composed as the medium to bring the text to life and not just to showcase the star singers. To be sure, the music is so beautiful and virtuosic that only the most accomplished of soprano d’agilite (soprano with great vocal agility) can do it justice, but unlike other bel canto works, each vocal ornamentation written for the 3 lead roles in this opera (Norma, Adalgisa, and Pollione) have dramatic function rather than to gratify canary-lovers. This perfect blend of the best of beautiful singing (bel canto) with dramatic intensity, earns Norma a permanent place in the operatic repertoire as the link between the vocal pyrotechnic loving Rossini and the orchestrally and dramatically dynamic Verdi.
This opera is also cursed with unrealistic audience expectations, especially for the soprano performing the title role (and make no mistake, there is no successful performance of this opera if Norma isn’t well sung). See, Bellini wrote the title role of Norma specifically to fit the very strange voice of the soprano Giuditta Pasta. What a singing phenomenon she must have been. This extremely demanding role calls for solid low notes well into the deep mezzo territory (as low as B-flat below the stave) and soars up tricky passages to soprano high C’s, sometimes covering the whole range in as little as 2 musical bars (After the 4 fortissimo (very loud) high A’s at the end of the 2nd verse of the aria ‘Casta diva, Norma climaxes out at a B-flat before descending all the way to low F only 2 bars later)’! The melodic line are long and light, requiring the smoothest of legato (seamless connection between notes) while occasionally jumping whole octave up or down. All with such light orchestral accompaniment that any mistake would be easily heard by a space alien eave-dropping from the planet Klingon 2 galaxies away.... OK, OK, I’m exaggerating a tad there. But not much more. If Isolde in Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’ is the most difficult role in German opera, Norma is her Italian opera counterpart.
Aside from the technical difficulties of the music of Norma, it is absolutely essential that the soprano attempting this role be a bit insane... If there’s ever a time when having manic-depressive or bipolar disorder could be beneficial, this is it. Norma, in the span of a little over 2 hours, experiences all the emotions some people don’t live long enough to learn. She first appears in Act I having an imperial fit, being miffed at the Druids for daring to demand war when it isn’t convenient for her. A few musical bars later, she sings this hypnotic prayer of chastity that (should) make all sinners repent on the spot and doubt our worthiness to kiss her feet. When Adalgisa comes to her for counsel about the unnamed Roman suitor, she and the younger woman break into a duet of love so rapturous that one wonders why they would have any need for men afterward.
And when she realizes the treachery of Pollione, she is the venom-spewing witch that dominates the Act I ending trio - and if you have heard how Maria Callas sings the line ‘Tremi tu? E per chi? (You tremble? And for whom?) in the 1952 LP recording at the poor Pollione of Gino Penno, you would have a good idea what the saying, ‘if voice could kill,’ signifies. After a break, she comes out in Act II attempting to kill her own children before being stopped by the horror of it all, she then has to be convincing in her pardoning and pledging undying friendship with her now romantic rival, sounding the gong to call for war against Rome, and then renouncing herself before all the Druids before sacrificing herself in the end.
It takes a great singer-actress to do all that believably while also coping with the music, or this opera doesn’t fly at all. I shall spare you the added dilemma of the casting for her side-kick Adalgisa for the time being and only note that while she is often sung by a mezzo soprano today, the original Adalgisa was the high soprano Giulia Grisi, who would later became a celebrated Norma in her own right (really, what mad composer would impose 2 ringing high C's on his mezzo anyhow?).
Since audio recording technology did not exist in her days, we don’t really know what Pasta sounded like. But considering that she also created the roles of; Amina (La Sonnambula), Anna Bolena, and Beatrice di Tenda (most sung today by light to lyric coloratura soprano), if follows that the singer of Norma should be expected to be able to sing those other roles as well.
This is not the case today, however. The different roles created by Sra Pasta are now sung by different singers of different vocal classifications. Norma, the most technically and dramatically challenging one of them all, fell out of standard repertoire until the 1950's when a certain dramatic coloratura soprano (big dramatic and agile soprano voice of large range) by the name of Maria Callas reintroduced the role to the major opera houses. Callas inhabited the role so well that most people have associated Norma with the dramatic coloratura voice and won't tolerate any lighter soprano in the role.
The problem is that a voice like Callas only comes along once or twice a generation (and even Callas wouldn’t fare as well by today’s convention with her Pasta-like register breaks). From reviews by her contemporary critics, Giuditta Pasta was said to have 3 distinct vocal registers (from the top of her range to the bottom, there were 2 places where her vocal timbre had to change. The places where the change occur are called ‘register breaks’). By today’s convention, a singer with a voice like that will have the hardest time finding a singing job due to the current preference for voices that can run from top to bottom seamlessly in one timbre.
So the casting difficulties means that Norma remains a very rarely performed work. And when it is done, the soprano singing Norma usually has to transpose her music down a step to be able to sing both the low and the high passages. And even with that, few of those that manage do so while convincingly bring the dramatic character to life. Great outcries are heard whenever a lighter voice attempts this role, since the post-Callas audience have been pre-conditioned to expect vocal heft from Norma even at the expense of technical ease on high passages. It is a rather vicious cycle that doesn’t really serve anyone well, I think. There will never be another Maria Callas, and subjecting all who come after her to the competition of her ghost is unfair... Even Callas couldn't compete with her pre-1960 self!
Bellini wrote Norma for Pasta, and no one alive today can tell you if Pasta’s voice was really more like Callas' and Sutherland's than like the lighter type of soprani singing the lighter Pasta roles of Amina, and Beatrice today. Wouldn’t it be so boring if everyone sings the same music the same way all the time? Even what one would consider a beautiful day can become quite bland when it is repeated too often, why shouldn’t one expand ones’ horizon and try something new sometimes?
In my wistful moment I wish people would quit applauding after the first part of the Norma/Adalgisa duets... These are 3 parts duets, folks... the parts don't stand by themselves!
If you do decide to have a go at this opera, here are some stellar recordings:
-CD of live performance from La Scala in 1960 conducted by Tullio Serafin and starring Maria Callas and Christa Ludwig as the 2 lead ladies
- CD conducted by Richard Bonynge starring Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne
- DVD of a performance from in 1974 conducted by Giuseppe Patane and starring Montserrat Caballe and Josephine Veasey. - the CD and DVD starring Edita Gruberova in the title role (the CD features Elina Garanca as Adalgisa, and the DVD has the wonderful Sonia Ganassi).
Some links of interest:
-Music Score for Norma : http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/scores/bah4585/large/index.html
-About Giuditta Pasta, the first Norma: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/04spring/cornell_paper.htm
-Sample the music of this opera at : http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/reserves/complete.html
Be sure to try the aria Casta diva (CD1, track 8); the duets Va, crudele (CD2, track 4), Oh! Rimembranza/ Ah! Si, fa’ core, e abbracciami (CD2, tracks 7 & 8), Mira, o Norma/ Si, fino all’ore estreme (CD3, tracks 5 & 6); and the trio Perfido! Or basti! Fermati! (CD2, tracks 14 & 15).
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