Vocal fireworks in Roman-occupied Gaul: a spectacular 'Norma' from the Dallas Opera

Spectacular singing was the order of the evening Friday as the Dallas Opera tackled its first-ever Norma. After a superb Madame Butterfly and Turn of the Screw, the company has been on a roll lately.

Vincenzo Bellini's vocal showpiece, portraying a tragic love triangle in Roman-occupied Gaul, can only be done with singers up to its formidable demands.

As the eponymous Druid high priestess, Elza van den Heever's Norma has it all: the power when needed, the nuanced intimacy elsewhere; coloratura of seemingly effortless fluidity; tenderness and vulnerability and scorching fury. Even at full tilt, the voice is never raw or edgy. Marina Costa-Jackson, as the junior priestess Adalgisa, is, if anything, even more powerful vocally, with a brilliant, but never cutting, edge on her soprano; she can also buff off the gleam for a warm satin finish. When the two sing together, their chains of parallel thirds are things of glowing beauty.

Tenor Yonghoon Lee hasn't that kind of subtlety, but the two-timing Roman proconsul Pollione isn't the nicest guy. He can sing sweet nothings when they serve his purpose, but most of the time he commands finely focused Italianate intensity. One doesn't wonder how he has swept these two women off their feet.

As the Druid high priest Oroveso, also Norma's father, bass-baritone Christian Van Horn projects brazen authority. Soprano Mithra Mastropierro and tenor Charles Karanja fill the secondary roles of Clotilde and Flavio. The chorus, prepared by Alexander Rom, delivers well-drilled heft and atmosphere as needed.

The little that actually happens in Norma challenges the stage director to create enough movement to avoid visual stasis. Nic Muni successfully accomplishes that here, although sometimes with unnecessary characters--notably Roman soldiers in Act 1--lurking on the edges. Both van den Heever and Costa-Jackson certainly have plenty of theatrical chops to animate their characters, and Lee's vocal intensity partially compensates for physical stiffness.

John Conklin, usually so admirable a set designer, frames all the action in rather uninspired stone walls with oddly projecting beams. Various projections--a face here, a solar eclipse there, a burned-out forest--appear in the background. A giant disc descends at mention of the shield of the Druid god Irminsul. Conklin dresses the Roman soldiers in quasi-Roman attire, the Gauls in nondescript blue-spattered gray robes. Ho-hum. Lighting designer Thomas C. Hase does what he can with the drab resources.

In previous outings here, music director Emmanuel Villaume's rather flamboyant conducting has sometimes whipped up more volume than subtlety from the Dallas Opera Orchestra, sometimes at singers' expense. This time he was considerably more  reserved, coaxing beautifully molded intimacies, keeping the exciting passages tautly controlled, very much attuned to the singers. Aside from a few more split brass notes than one would have wished, the orchestra played very well indeed.

Formerly the classical music critic of The Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell now covers the beat as a freelance writer.

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Repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday and May 7, and at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday at Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora. $19 to $239. 214-443-1000, dallasopera.org.