Around 1830 as the Romantic movement gained traction in Italian opera, works with strong, heroic female protagonists became more popular. Beginning notably with Anna Bolena (1830) and continuing with Lucrezia Borgia (1833), Maria Stuarda (1835), and Roberto Devereux (1837), Gaetano Donizetti created several such operas in which beauty of tone, vocal power, mastery of coloratura, bold declamation, tender expression, and dramatic intensity were essential attributes of the heroines. It was Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma (1831), however, that emerged as the era’s touchstone opera uniting these qualities, and the work has never lost its classic status. Sopranos approached the role of the High Priestess of the Druids with reverence and trepidation. Until the 1960s only five women—Lilli Lehmann, Rosa Ponselle, Gina Cigna, Zinka Milanov, and Maria Callas—had sung Norma at the Metropolitan Opera; in 1970 Joan Sutherland joined their ranks. Around the same time, the role began to be viewed as generally fair game for just about any proficient soprano with a flair for the Italian repertoire—and a few mezzo-sopranos too—so that Norma was no longer the province of the select few; performances of the opera were becoming less rare.
Not so at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where the opera premiered in 1831. Prior to its welcome new production, which opened in June, Norma had not been staged there since 1977, with Montserrat Caballé as soprano. Among Caballé’s recent predecessors was Maria Callas, who sang Norma more than any other role of her career and gave more performances of it at La Scala than anywhere else. Given the vagaries of opera production, reasons other than the lack of a suitable protagonist must have contributed to La Scala’s forty-eight-year gap, but that search for the right lead was surely fundamental in explaining the break.
Happily, that hunt ended up finding the Latvian soprano Marina Rebeka. Her name may not be on everyone’s lips, but she is a respected artist at the height of her career. I was first struck by the lustrous beauty of her voice and potent stage presence at the 2009 Salzburg Festival, where she sang in Rossini’s French grand opera Moïse conducted by Riccardo Muti, a performance regarded as her international breakthrough. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut two years later as Donna Anna, and in 2017 she emerged as the best of the three Met Normas. La Scala was right on the mark in choosing Rebeka, even if the pick attracted little media hype. The supporting cast included the sensational young Russian mezzo-soprano Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, as the young princess Adalgisa; the tenor Freddie De Tommaso, as Norma’s lover Pollione, the Roman proconsul who fathered her two children; and the eminent bass Michele Pertusi, as Norma’s father, Oroveso.
For the production, La Scala engaged Olivier Py, a prominent European director who, like many of his stripe, is apt to take liberties. The action of Norma was straightforwardly presented, but with two modifications. First, the setting was updated from Gaul during the Roman occupation to roughly the time and place of the premiere, when Austria ruled Milan. The décor, designed by Pierre-André Weitz, initially portrayed La Scala itself (later the Druid temple was depicted in gilded modern fashion). During the overture, Austrian soldiers in white uniforms (representing the Romans) executed a roughly dressed Italian (a Druid).
Second, and more seriously, as Norma played out, the theater was shown in pantomime preparing to stage Cherubini’s Medea with bare-topped male dancers and other performers, including a masked woman meant to represent Maria Callas (as if her ghost hasn’t hovered over Norma long enough). The two spectacles unfolded largely independently but sometimes overlapped. When Norma spoke of confronting the Romans with force, a dancer gave her a sword; when, seconds later, she said it wasn’t yet time, he took it back. The added elements became increasingly tiresome as the evening wore on, with the dancers detracting, in particular, from the tragic close, one of opera’s most poignant. At this point, it was also a mistake to bring in the children to view their parents’ execution.
Without slighting the role’s heroic dimensions, Rebeka’s Norma emerged as notably human and feminine. Her pure, resonant voice, tonally ample yet compact, was a consistent pleasure to hear. She promptly won the audience’s favor with a luminous “Casta diva”—authoritative in the recitative, fluent in the long-spanned melodies, glistening in the nicely ornamented cabaletta. The intensity she brought to critical dramatic moments without sacrificing vocal beauty was especially welcome. For instance, the ingratiating, if static, Act I trio, sung after Norma learns of Pollione’s infidelity, was uncommonly effective, thanks to Rebeka’s strong declamation. Fiery outbursts elsewhere, often heightened by purposeful coloratura, were gripping. At the close, she faced death with tenderness and resolve.
Berzhanskaya’s Adalgisa was also outstanding. Her glowing mezzo-soprano had a clarity that made for an ideal blend with Rebeka’s voice in their sumptuous duets. Berzhanskaya vividly conveyed the young priestess’s anguish in weighing her passion for Pollione against her priestly vows and developing loyalty to Norma. Her unusually nuanced singing in the cabaletta of her duet with the Roman proconsul suggested she had doubts about him from the start. De Tommaso contributed a hearty and well-sung, if monochromatic, portrayal of Pollione that never suggested he was anything more than a cad. With his velvety bass voice, Pertusi made Oroveso a pillar of Druidic rectitude, albeit a sympathetic one.
Fabio Luisi conducted with considerable style. He ensured, sometimes with slowish tempos, that Bellini’s melodies revealed their full expressivity while not allowing them to droop. But he also brought energy to the score in a reading that handsomely complemented Rebeka’s intensity and gave the singers exemplary support. The opera was performed virtually uncut in the fullest account of the score I have experienced in an opera house.
