Back again at last: »Norma«

Bellini's opera Norma contains some of the most beautiful melodies in the history of opera: the famous prayer "Casta diva", the beguiling seduction song "Vieni in Roma..." by the Roman proconsul Pollione and the impressive duets between the high priestess Norma and the novice Adalgisa.

These musical highlights are embedded in a multi-layered, contrasting score. It ranges from the passionate overture and mysterious, nocturnal soundscapes to rousing choral scenes and highly dramatic ensemble moments. The great final climax is particularly impressive: Norma's poignant plea to her father unites all the voices in a musical climax.

For Norma, Bellini once again worked with his preferred librettist Felice Romani, whose elegant and expressive verses made him famous. The opera was composed especially for the celebrated tragedienne Giuditta Pasta. She was regarded as an outstanding actress with an exceptionally versatile voice. The tragedy of the same name by Alexandre Soumet, which had recently premiered in Paris, served as the literary model.

Bellini himself was convinced by his work and wrote to Pasta: "I hope you like this subject - Romani thinks it is very effective and suited to your extraordinary talent."

Norma is a Gaulish druid priestess who is committed to her peace-bringing goddess of the moon and fertility. She refuses to give the war-hungry Gauls the signal to revolt against Roman rule. According to her matriarchal understanding, the two children she bore in secret marriage to the Roman Pollione and kept hidden from her compatriots are not a violation of a patriarchally imposed vow of chastity: they are manifestations of her spiritual potency.

When Pollione tries to cheat on her with a younger woman, her existence threatens to collapse. But she overcomes the temptation to kill her children and punish her rival and ultimately saves their lives by denouncing herself. Oroveso, Norma's father, leaves us with the hope that his daughter's pleas for protection and care for her children may not have been in vain.

With his third opera Il pirata (1827), performed at La Scala in Milan, Vincenzo Bellini had already earned himself a reputation as a reformer of the Italian opera stage at the age of 26. He succeeded, even before the somewhat older Donizetti, in breaking through the dictates of Rossiniʼs classicism and opening up new, romantic areas of expression in melodrama for his generation.

For several decades, the work of this composer has increasingly become the focus of a reassessment driven by both theater practice and musicology. Although three of his ten operas, La sonnambula and Norma (both 1831) and I puritani (1835), have remained in the repertoire of opera houses uninterruptedly since their premieres, for a long time Bellini was only recognized as a great melodist who "had melodies that could not have been dreamt of more beautifully" (Richard Wagner). Today we know that the supposed "lirico puro" is the first person in the history of Italian opera, after Monteverdi, to embody a personal union of composer and dramatist.