Norma, Opera by V. Bellini
Vincenzo Bellini was surely a composer ahead of his time. When the protagonists of many of his contemporaries were still only one step up from the stock characters of commedia dell’arte, Bellini’s Norma is a fascinating psychological study of what it means to be human. Complex and conflicted, the eponymous heroine of Bellini’s opera is a Druid high priestess caught between her devotion to her people and her love for their enemy’s representative, the Roman proconsul, Pollione.
As the opera opens, Norma is already under strain; the result of keeping her relationship with Pollione and the identity of their two sons a secret. When she learns that Pollione has fallen in love with a novice, Adalgisa, Norma comes within a hair’s breadth of murdering their children. War beckons and custom demands a sacrifice before going into battle. Pollione is the perfect choice because, in seeking out Adalgisa, he has desecrated the temple. But Norma cannot bring herself to kill him. In an astounding finale, her anger at Pollione and Adalgisa turns to guilt for having betrayed her faith.
Although Bellini himself felt that the response to Norma, when the opera was premiered at La Scala in Milan on 26 December 1831, was somewhat subdued, it nonetheless enjoyed a sustained run at the theatre, with thirty-three performances in its first season. The audience’s muted reaction could well have been because they were shell-shocked by what they had just seen. Love triangles fuelled by deception were commonplace in the comedies of the nineteenth century. Norma, by contrast, is a lyrical tragedy in which the various parties, regardless of the consequences for themselves, do not play to type: Adalgisa does her utmost to make amends by imploring Pollione to return to Norma; the proconsul’s refusal, as he coldly ignores her pleas, serves to stoke up the dramatic tension right up until the very last moments of the opera.
Norma is now set to storm the stage of the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice. The work includes one of the most demanding roles in the genre but, with a story that provides the perfect justification for bel canto coloratura, it is one that some of the greatest stars in opera have relished performing.