Opera review: Bellini's Norma at The Metropolitan Opera

5 / 5 stars
Bellini’s Norma at The Metropolitan Opera New York, USA

THE Metropolitan Opera in New York launched its 2017-18 season last week in a gala evening beginning on the Lincoln Center’s piazza with a battalion of flashing cameras for red carpet celebrities.

Norma operaKEN HOWARD/ METROPOLITAN OPERA

The Metropolitan Opera in New York launched its 2017-18 season last week

With a seating capacity of 3,800, the Met is the largest opera house in the world and the start of the season is a mega event.

The opening production of Bellini’s supreme tragedy Norma will be seen worldwide next Saturday as the first in the Met’s 12th year of live cinema broadcasts.

In contrast with the auditorium bling, Sir David McVicar’s staging takes us into a bleak world of Druids and their Roman oppressors in Gaul 50BC.

Traditional in style, its concept is simply to allow music and singers to speak for the composer.

Designer Robert Jones’s dappled forest, beautifully lit by Paule Constable, is winched up out of sight in the second scene to reveal a wattle yurt where Druid high priestess Norma lives, and where she keeps hidden her two illicit children by Roman proconsul Pollione.

By flouting her celibacy vows and fraternising with the enemy, Norma has broken every rule in the Druidic book.

The story turns on Norma’s fury when she discovers that her lover plans to desert her for a young novice priestess, Adalgisa, whom he will take back to Rome.

Norma is the most difficult of “bel canto” roles for the intricacy of the coloratura trills and the heightened emotion.

Norma operaKEN HOWARD/ METROPOLITAN OPERA

With a seating capacity of 3,800, the Met is the largest opera house in the world

Norma is both betrayer and betrayed. She is at war with herself, at one moment contemplating killing her two sons by Pollione, at the next overwhelmed with maternal love at the sight of the boys peacefully asleep.

Great Normas of the past have included the legendary Maria Callas, Montserrat Caballe, and Joan Sutherland.

Now star American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, whose voice has the power needed for the vast auditorium, makes the role her own.

Beginning with the famous aria invoking the moon goddess, Casta Diva (Chaste Goddess), Radvanovsky gives it her heart and soul.

As does mezzo Joyce DiDonato as Adalgisa, who moves from shy novice to unwitting rival, and then supporter in sisterhood.

The two voices combine flawlessly, especially at the moment before they discover, with the arrival of Joseph Calleja’s Pollione, that they are expressing love for the same man.

Norma opera KEN HOWARD/ METROPOLITAN OPERA

The opening production of Bellini’s supreme tragedy Norma will be seen worldwide next Saturday

Calleja, in clarion voice, convincingly evolves from chauvinistic love rat of the first act, to humbled penitent of the last scene.

The final reckoning comes as Norma confesses her guilt to her people and to her chieftain father Oroveso, an impressive portrayal by British bass Matthew Rose.

As Norma condemns herself to the sacrificial fire, she is joined by Pollione, in declaration of his renewed love.

In an evening of passionately committed performances from the entire cast, the Metropolitan Orchestra under conductor Carlo Rizzi brings out the glorious lyricism of the score.

Next in line for the Met’s 10 live cinema is Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte on October 14 and on November 18 Thomas Adès’s new opera The Exterminating Angel.

The New Year features a staging by McVicar of Puccini’s Tosca. 

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