Programme booklet »Norma«

VINCENZO BELLINI

NORMA

CONTENTS

P.

4

SYNOPSIS P.

7

THE MUSIC BEYOND THE SCORE MICHELE MARIOTTI P.

13

“...A MUSIC THAT UNITES SONG & DRAMA INTO A SINGLE WHOLE” UWE SCHWEIKERT P.

24

ON FELICE ROMANI’S & VINCENZO BELLINI’S NORMA SERGIO MORABITO

P.

30

PERSONAL UNION OF COMPOSER AND PLAYWRIGHT FABRIZIO DELLA SETA P.

34

A COLLECTIVE SIGNATURE THE DIRECTOR AND HIS TEAM TALK ABOUT THEIR WORK ON NORMA P.

38

IMPRINT

VINCENZO BELLINI

NORMA TRAGIC OPERA in two acts Libretto FELICE ROMANI

ORCHESTRA

STAGE MUSIC

2 flutes (both doubling on piccolo) 2 oboes / 2 clarinets / 2 bassoons 4 horns / 2 trumpets (1 colle chiavi) 3 trombones / cimbasso timpani / percussion / strings 3 flutes / 3 clarinets 3 horns / 6 trumpets 3 trombones / tuba percussion (small drum, large drum, tamtam)

AUTOGRAPH Ricordi Archives, Milan WORLD PREMIÈRE 26 DEC 1831 Teatro alla Scala, Milan AUSTRIAN PREMIÈRE 11 MAY 1833 Kärntnertortheater DURATION

3H

INCL. 1 INTERMISSION

NORMA

SYNOPSIS ACT 1 Oroveso, the leader of the Druids, urges the Gauls not to rise against the despised Roman oppressors without divine consent.

At moonrise, his daughter, the priestess Norma, will reveal the will of the gods. The men invoke Irminsul, the god of war, praying that he will give the signal to revolt.

In secret, Pollione, the Roman proconsul, carries on a marriage-like affair with Norma, with whom he has two children.

However, he has not slipped into the temple to see his family but rather to pursue Adalgisa, a young priestess with whom he has fallen in love.

Norma appears before the people and prophesies Rome’s downfall: “one day, it will perish – but not by your hand. It will be undone by its own vices.” Her spiritual authority compels the Gauls to join in a prayer to the moon goddess, seeking peace.

She then dismisses the assembly. Once again, she has shielded Pollione and their children from the dangers of an uprising.

Pollione confides in Adalgisa – torn between love and guilt – that he intends to return to Rome. Adalgisa resolves to follow him.

Norma confides in her attendant Clotilde her growing fears about Pollione’s estrangement. Meanwhile, Adalgisa confesses to Norma that she has fallen in love. To her surprise, Norma absolves her of her vow. But when she learns that Adalgisa’s lover is none other than the father of her own children, Adalgisa recoils in horror, denouncing Pollione as a deceiver, while Norma, consumed with rage, curses him.

Previous pages:

FEDERICA LOMBARDI as NORMA

4

SYNOPSIS

ACT 2 Norma believes she must kill her children: among the Gauls, they would face certain death; among the Romans, they are assured of slavery – “worse even than death.” Yet she cannot bring herself to do it. She then implores Adalgisa to marry Pollione and to assume the role of stepmother to her two children.

Adalgisa manages, however, to restore hope to Norma, who is now determined to take her own life: she herself will persuade Pollione to return to her and the children.

Oroveso warns the Gauls – eager to ambush the Roman camp – to exercise restraint because Pollione is set to be replaced by a significantly more ruthless proconsul.

Clotilde brings Norma the news that Adalgisa’s attempt at mediation has failed. In revenge for Pollione’s betrayal, Norma gives the long-awaited signal for open revolt. Pollione is captured and dragged in—he had attempted to abduct Adalgisa, who rejected him. In a private confrontation, Norma makes Pollione one final offer: if he is willing to renounce Adalgisa, she will enable his escape, yet it is only when she threatens to have Adalgisa executed before his eyes does his cynical indifference waver. His repentance comes too late.

Norma calls the people back, declaring that she must denounce the treason of a faithless priestess. Yet instead of denouncing Adalgisa, she answers the anxious questions about her identity by saying, “I am the one.” Pollione, acknowledging her sacrifice, professes his love for her anew, yet his plea to Norma for forgiveness goes unanswered. Norma reveals to her father, Oroveso, that she is a mother. Before she ascends the pyre, she manages to wrest from the reluctant Oroveso the promise to protect her children from the wrath of her people.

5

MICHELE MARIOTTI

THE MUSIC BEYOND THE SCORE To a certain extent, performers must approach Bellini’s music with the same care as one would an old person. “An old person?” many of you will say. What I mean by this seemingly strange comparison is that everything depends on the right ratios, the right balance. The biggest challenge lies in finding the fine line between “not too much” and “not too little”, otherwise music and story take a back seat.

The greatness of Bellini’s scores, especially in the case of Norma, derives from the successful, precise combination of the unique “melodie lunghe” – long melody – with various subtle differences in expression that bring the drama, emotions and situations, to life.

This is also what make the opera so popular. If the conductor or the singer does too little, the composition falls apart and the essence of the story evaporates. If you push too hard, first of all you end up becoming a pseudo-Verdi and secondly you create the impression FEDERICA LOMBARDI as NORMA

that the music needs our active help to come to life – which is nonsense. Its power comes from the transparency and simplicity of the melodies, which seem to unfold on their own, and the musical permeation of the text.

As with late Rossini – for example in Mathilde’s aria in Guillaume Tell – the long, captivatingly beautiful melodies in Norma do not outwardly appear to change or evolve and give the impression that they could continue in the same form forever. But behind this artistic lightness in the music lies the depth of the drama. I like to compare Norma to an ocean in good weather. The surface appears calm, but beneath it, in the depths, there is turmoil, where all the contradictory human emotions we know are simmering. To convey these to the audience, the conductor must select the right tempo, the right dynamics, observe the agogics, the smallest nuances, stresses, phrasing, which must correspond to Felice Romani’s

7

MICHELE MARIOTTI

congenial poetry. Even a pause is an important feature that must be filled with life.

The basic principle is that the music must be experienced beyond the score.

The orchestra must also take this into account: the apparently simple arpeggios and pizzicati are by no means mere accompaniment figures. The musicians cannot simply follow the vocal parts, but must serve the drama by singing along with them! The conductor must be mindful of the overall structure. It is like a painting: all the details together make up the picture, but if you get too lost in specific details, you miss the overall view.

This applies not only to the arias, duets, larger ensembles and choruses, but also to the recitatives. As with Christoph Willibald Gluck, these are full-scale theatre, and it was not without reason that we spent a lot of rehearsal time on them to do them justice. Even such short interjections as “L’amante! La madre de’ tuoi figli!” (“Your lover! The mother of your children!”), Flavio’s accusation flung at Pollione, require precise interpretation. At this point, we must see Flavio’s horror that Pollione is not only betraying his beloved, but his entire family. Something like that cannot be simply tossed off; it must be charged with the right meaning.

The difficulty for singers and conductors alike is Bellini’s sparse directions. Take for example the Norma and Adalgisa’s first duet. The emotional state of the two could not be more different: one excitedly admits that she has fallen in love, the other is paralysed and remembers, lost in thought, that she once had the same experience. The accompaniment is identical. If we did

not differentiate between the two artistically, no one in the audience would understand what emotionally different worlds are being described here. But Bellini leaves how to achieve that up to the performer.

The situation in the “Andante marcato” of the first finale is comparable, but even more drastic: the fateful love triangle is revealed, Pollione is confronted with his former and current lover. And what happens musically?

One and the same barcarole-like 9/8 melody is passed from singer to singer.

Superficially, there is no difference, and the score does not specify any. It is up to us as singers to give the same melody an appropriate emotional colouring with the enraged Norma, the horrified Adalgisa and the cornered Pollione. Anyone who ignores this will miss the theatrical uniqueness of this moment.

And the fact that Bellini wanted to put a very special spotlight on this finale is already evident from the external form, which was modern for the time: traditionally, at this point in an opera, the entire ensemble would be on stage – the soloists and the chorus, a large crowd. Bellini breaks with this custom and creates something completely new: an intimate chamber piece with the three main actors in an exceptional situation – we only hear the chorus from off-stage a little later. For me, this first finale is Bellini’s dramaturgical calling card and one of the highlights of Norma.

Speaking of the chorus: it has two functions in this opera. On the one hand, it traditionally comments on the events in the concertati, and on the other hand, it also actively participates in the plot. And in very different ways. At the beginning, together with Oroveso, the chorus creates a dark, ele-

8

THE MUSIC BEYOND THE SCORE

gant, sacred atmosphere. In the second act, this is contrasted to the martial Guerra passage; through this drama Bellini once again explores the range of expression beyond the usual limits of the time. The chorus plays a much larger role in Bellini’s work than was the case with Rossini’s earlier work. I would even go so far as to describe the chorus in Norma as another lead role.

Incidentally, Bellini shows his talent as a composer and dramatist right from the start. The overture is nothing less than a purely instrumental prelude.

It anticipates Norma’s nature, her two conflicting souls: the desperate rage that is determined to do anything and would even kill her own children, and the motherly love that extends beyond her death.

Following pages: VASILISA BERZHANSKAYA as ADALGISA

KS JUAN DIEGO FLÓREZ as POLLIONE HIROSHI AMAKO als FLAVIO

Finally, I would like to point out another aspect of Bellini’s musical dramaturgical finesse in the first duet between Norma and Adalgisa mentioned above; this can only be satisfactorily performed if Adalgisa is also cast with a soprano voice and not transposed down – as is usually done when a mezzo assumes the role. At the point in question, the two women do show very different emotions - but the fact that they love the same man – Pollione – is to be expressed through the similarity of the voices. It would be ideal if the voices sounded confusingly similar (as in the case of our première series) and the distinction could only be heard through the difference in emotion. Just a small detail, but one that demonstrates Bellini’s musical-­ theatrical flair.

9

UWE SCHWEIKERT

“...A MUSIC THAT UNITES SONG & DRAMA INTO A SINGLE WHOLE” In the third book of his major work, The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer – in the chapter devoted to the “Aesthetics of Poetry” – defines tragedy as the highest expression of the sublime. He writes, “The call to turn the will away from life remains the true tendency of tragedy, the ultimate purpose of the deliberate portrayal of human suffering and is also, thus, where this resigned elevation of the spirit is not shown in the hero himself but merely evoked in the spectator, through the sight of great, undeserved, and even self-inflicted suffering.” For the German philosopher, it is neither the ancient tragedians nor Shakespeare that appear as the ultimate embodiment of the tragic muse, but it is Bellini’s opera Norma “What is noteworthy here is that we seldom see such pure motivation and clear expression of the truly tragic impact of the catastrophe, hence the resignation and spiritual uplift it brings about in the heroes, as we do in the opera Norma. We see it here in the duet “Qual cor tradisti, qual cor perdesti” (“What heart you betrayed, what heart you lost”), where the reversal of

will is rendered, unmistakably, in the sudden tranquillity of the music. Altogether, this piece – quite apart from its excellent music and separately from its diction, which must necessarily be that of an opera, even when considered solely in terms of its motifs and its internal coherence and composition, a highly perfect tragedy, a true model of tragic conception, tragic progression of action, and tragic development, along with the elevating effect this has on the mindset of its heroes, which then transfers to the audience. Indeed, the effect achieved here is all the more unambiguous and characteristic of the true essence of tragedy precisely because neither Christians nor Christian sentiments appear within it.

Schopenhauer’s high regard for Bellini’s art surprises us today. Other distinguished figures – among them, notably, Richard Wagner, a lifelong admirer of Bellini – could likewise be counted among those who shared this admiration. While the likes of Chopin, Liszt, and Clara Schumann still expressed admiration for the blond Sicilian, only a few decades later, Viennese critic

12

“... A MUSIC T H AT U N IT E S SONG &

DRAMA INTO A SINGLE WHOLE”

Eduard Hanslick claimed his music had “a true halo of boredom.” As the 19th century progressed, Bellini – like his contemporaries Rossini and Donizetti – became synonymous with a self-indulgent, empty virtuosity. Only later, through Maria Callas, was his work revitalised, illustrating how Bellini’s drama arises directly from the singing and the singing directly from the words.

Much of the merit of Bellini’s musical dramaturgy is owed to the librettist Felice Romani, who penned the text for seven of his ten operas. Romani possessed all the essentials a 19th-century lyric writer required: an appreciation for the effects of dramatic scenarios in musical theatre and the ability to compose graceful, diverse verses that seamlessly embraced the song’s cantilenas. Bellini no longer allowed the librettos of his operas to be imposed upon him as finished products but rather exerted direct influence over the genre, material, colour, the dramatic structure of situations, and the distribution of lines. In 1828, he told a friend, following the revision of Bianca e Fernando, how crucial Romani’s “beautiful verses” were for him: “...especially for me, as the words are of great importance. In Pirata, you can see how verses, not dramatic situations, have inspired me... which is why I require Romani.” A reliable anecdote illustrates just how crucial words were to his vision of a new musical theatre.

During the rehearsals for Pirata, he is said to have told tenor Rubini, who ini­ tially didn’t know what to do with the role of Gualtiero, “You don’t like my music because it is uncomfortable and unfamiliar to you; but what if I have set my mind on introducing a new style, a music that precisely expresses the words

and makes singing and drama into a single whole...?”

None of Bellini’s works comes closer to this goal of musical dramatic coherence than Norma, which premiered on December 26, 1831, at La Scala in Milan – his eighth opera since his debut in 1825. As was customary in Italian librettistics of the time, Romani based it on a piece of French theatre – incidentally, something contemporary, entirely new – the five-act verse tragedy Norma ou l’Infanticide (Norma or The Infanticide) by Alexandre Soumet, which had premiered in April 1831. Soumet was considered one of the leading playwrights of France in his time. His writings encapsulate the romantic fervour of the generation moved by Chateaubriand’s Génie du christianisme into classicist poetic expression. In his work Norma, Soumet proves to be an eclectic, deftly embracing a wide range of literary inspirations and poetic trends of the time. His intentions become clear from the words with which he described Mademoiselle George, the actress playing Norma: “After having, in the first four acts, successively played the Niobe of the Greeks, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, the seeress Velleda from Chateaubriand’s Martyrs – and thus having traversed the whole gamut of all the passions contained in the female heart – she rose in the madness scene of the final act to a height of dramatic inspiration that perhaps may never be reached again.”

In Soumet’s version, the tragedy of the druid priestess ends in a bloodbath; Norma goes mad, stabbing one of her sons and then dragging the other with her to death as she leaps from a cliff.

Romani condenses the plot, hones the characters, and delivers an entirely dif-

13

UWE SCHWEIKERT

ferent and indeed contrasting ending.

With him, Norma admits her guilt for breaking the commandment of her rank and people, entrusts her children to the protection of Oroveso, and, after reconciling with Pollione, voluntarily ascends the funeral pyre. People have generally tried to explain the conciliatory ending, including the withdrawal of the stark effects of Soumet’s template, by referring to the standard practice of Italian libretto writing, which indeed frequently had to give due regard to both censorship concerns and audience preferences. This objection, however, does not hold here. For one, Romani and Bellini –just think of the final catastrophes in Il pirata and La straniera, not to mention the bloodbath in Zaira – have never been particularly gentle with the nerves of the audience anyway. Furthermore – and this is much more crucial – Romani’s libretto and Bellini’s music together imbue the new ending with a persuasive artistic logic. This is also highlighted by the other changes that Romani has made to his original, partly by consciously drawing on Soumet’s sources. He emphasises less the historical conflict with the political opposition between the Romans and Gauls and more the Druid cult, transforming the military leader Oroveso into the head of the Druids and the father of Norma, and converting Adalgisa, who had turned to Christianity, into a Druidic novice.

The character of Norma, as presented to us in the opera, is wholly the creation of Romani’s. He dismisses the traits of the ancient Medea, which ultimately prevail in Soumet’s Norma, and reshapes them with the image of a seeress who, at her first appearance, seems almost trance-like, as depicted in the guise of Velleda from Chateaubriand’s

prose epic Les Martyrs (The Martyrs or the Triumph of the Christian Religion).

There, the druid priestess Velleda, bound by a vow of chastity, falls in love with the young Roman commander Eudore and takes her own life. That the opera also provided inspiration – with Soumet having already provided Gaspare Spontini with a Vestal, Julia, torn between duty and inclination – is obvious to any librettist. The romantically magical ambience of the Druid cult – with its veneration of the Irminsul, the invocation of the moon goddess, the ceremony of mistletoe cutting, that is, the oracular pronouncements and rites of the seeress – is not merely an arabesque feature as in Soumet’s version but is dramatically implied. Nothing in this stems from the librettist’s imagination. Instead, everything fits into a coherent mythological context, including the Celtic cult figure of the bloodied war god, Irminsul. As a co-editor of a multi-volume encyclopaedia of mythology and antiquities, Romani possessed an in-depth knowledge of first-hand sources. Sergio Morabito, in the programmatic essay for the Stuttgart production of Norma he co-directed with Jossi Wieler, has demonstrated that this is the key to understanding Bellini’s opera. My discussion is indebted to this approach even when I do not explicitly cite it.

The extent to which Bellini was actively involved in the selection of the material, how much he was privy to the mythological details of the stage design, and indeed how far they aligned with his own intentions remains unclear, though this is ultimately inconsequential. What is decisive is rather that Romani, with his libretto, provided him with an emotionally charged,

14

“... A MUSIC T H AT U N IT E S SONG &

DRAMA INTO A SINGLE WHOLE”

clearly structured narrative featuring a conflict tension built among distinct individuals, an original title character in every respect who stands apart from conventional norms, romantic settings, a secretive, mystical atmosphere, and – not least – those singable verses that aroused his imagination, stimulated his melodic inventiveness, and put him into a creative mood, enabling him to complete the score in less than three months. Beyond the constraints of the libretto, Bellini aims for a musical-dramatic coherence that is unparalleled among his contemporaries. The few solo numbers are almost always set in a dialogic context, blurring the lines between aria and ensemble. The declamatory vocals adapt to the shifts in mood of the story and the feelings of the characters; even the melismas exhibit gestural, speaking expressions. This approach results in music where the singing is not simply a hedonistic goal but serves the drama.

So, what – put very directly – is Bellini’s opera really about? “Even in Norma”, according to Bellini expert Friedrich Lippmann, “Bellini wrote a variation on his fundamental theme – the fundamental theme of the romantic Italian opera in general: love challenged by politics, by dark forces, by deviations.” Norma, as one reads in all the opera guides and typically sees on stage, is a woman torn between two peoples, the Gauls and the Romans, and between two passions: her duty as a priestess and her love for the enemy commander. The first claim is valid for Soumet’s play but not for Bellini’s opera; the second applies to Bellini’s opera only to a limited extent. The first statement – the political camouflage –

is easily refuted; the second – the emotional turmoil of the heroine – requires a fundamental revision, at least regarding its causes, for Norma’s self-sacrifice is by no means a political manifestation.

The Romans – to begin with the simpler subject – are not depicted in the opera as an occupying force, not even as a backdrop or atmospheric detail.

Their proconsul Pollione appears to us only as a private individual – as Norma’s former lover, who is now courting the young priestess, Adalgisa. His confidant Flavio cautions him of the deadly dangers of the enemy woods. Pollione’s concerns in his opening aria – which Romani places, unadorned yet ingenious, between the Druid procession and Norma’s mistletoe ritual – are not about the outbreak of a looming Gallic uprising but about the nightmare in which Norma, opposing his liaison with Adalgisa, brings about his own ruin: a clear foreshadowing of the conclusion. Ever present, however, is the other side, that of the Druids and Gallic warriors. Even if they don’t fill the scene like in the processions, rituals, and choruses of both acts, they dictate the atmosphere of the action. The intensity of their hatred doesn’t merely erupt in the unleashed ferocity of their war anthem in the second act but imposes itself on Norma from the very beginning, from Oroveso’s cavatina and the choral introduction, as an encircling threat upon Norma, who, as a seeress by divine mandate, mandates peace for her people – a peace prompted by her love as well. For their part, the Druids and warriors await nothing less than for Norma to give the command, as a delegate of the god Irminsul, to start the rebellion against the Romans. The omnipresence

15

UWE SCHWEIKERT

of the band and its march music – even in the cabaletta of Pollione’s opening aria, we hear them resounding in the background – is what we think of first when we recall the complaints dating back to the days of Verdi and Wagner about the meagreness of Bellini, a “poor musician” who – as Wagner put it – “did not know the resources of music at all.”

Even John Rosselli, whose short mono­ graph on Bellini (published in 1996 in the Musical Lives series of the Cambridge University Press) is the best and most insightful work on Bellini there is, perceives the “village orchestra” and its marches as a “stumbling block” that functions like an “air pocket.” Nonetheless, from a dramaturgical standpoint, Bellini is correct. He should not be blamed for the music not being sublime, just as Wagner cannot be criticised for the banality of the Pilgrim’s March and Choir in Tannhäuser or the Bridal March in Lohengrin. In every instance, it involves scenic music that must justify itself purely in terms of the dramatic requirements, not before the courts of academic scholarship.

Behind the contrast between the Roman occupying force in the background and the vanquished Gauls, one wanted to see a deliberate allusion to the situation of contemporary Italy – which in the south was under the rule of the Spanish Bourbons and in the north under that of the Austrian Habsburgs.

There is – as was the case later with Verdi – no evidence that Bellini placed his art at the service of the Risorgimento, let alone knowingly concealed the allegedly political allegorical nature of the plot. Undoubtedly, following the quelling of the armed revolts against the Habsburgs in central Italy in the spring of 1831, the political climate on

the peninsula was charged. To speak seriously of a “heroic-fighting perspective as an identification offer to a public disillusioned by another foreign policy setback”, as Fabian Stallknecht intends to read from Norma, is out of the question. Specific interventions of censorship in the text of Romani’s libretto – for example, in Norma’s opening aria – clearly demonstrate the suspicion and nervousness of the Austrian authorities.

It was not until the revolution of 1848, and later during the war against Austria in 1859/60, that the frenzied war chorus of the Gauls turned into a sort of Italian Marseillaise. Incidentally, Giuseppe Mazzini, the political-ideological pioneer of the Risorgimento and founder of the republican secret society Giovine Italia, did not hold Bellini in high esteem. In his 1836 work La filosofia della musica, he cites Rossini and Meyerbeer as exemplars of future musical drama.

As for Bellini, he relegates him to the rank of a progressive artist, proclaiming, “Indeed, the final act of Norma, conceived and executed in the spirit of Raphael, contains all of Bellini… even if his music does not follow the sickly sweetness of Metastasio, it nevertheless resembles the poetry of Lamartine, a poet who evokes the infinite and strives for it, albeit kneeling and in prayer – a poetry that is sweet, enamoured, and pathetic, yet at the same time resigned and submissive, and which in the final analysis tends rather to weaken, to destroy, and to render the human spirit infertile instead of strengthening, revitalising, and making it more fruitful.”

As a description, not as a critique, Mazzini’s judgment truly captures the essence of Bellini’s Norma, the emotional portrayal in his music and the psychological drama of its heroine.

16

“... A MUSIC T H AT U N IT E S SONG &

DRAMA INTO A SINGLE WHOLE”

The conflict is certainly not an internal one between duty and inclination but rather an almost externalised one between two opposing concepts of life and love and demonstrating this is what constitutes the innovative quality of the Stuttgart production by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito. In Norma – I quote Morabito here – it is about “the subversive restoration of female dominance. The overthrown, exorcised ‘Great Goddess’ has regained her territory and has taken up residence once more in her former temple with her children. That is the truly great achievement of the librettist Romani: having established the cult of the ‘chaste goddess’ of the moon, which only seemingly coexists with the cult of the Irminsul – the blooded, patriarchal god of war – but, in reality, undermines it and hollows it out. The reign of peace stands against that of war.”

This contrast between peace and war, this non-psychological conflict between matrilinear and patriarchal gender order, is expressed in Norma’s grand scene and cavatina, where Bellini does not celebrate a meaningless, hedonistic – as Mazzini would say: “Raphael-like” – bel canto, but rather penetrates through all the undeniably present musical beauty to the meaning of the cultic ritual and thus to the core of the drama. Let us bring to mind – drawing on Chateaubriand – the sequence as described by Romani’s libretto. The moon shrouds itself in a veil, signalling to the Druids that Irminsul is speaking through Norma’s mouth.

Norma, brandishing the golden sickle, scales the Druid’s rock and glances around as though in a trance. During her recitative, concluding with the cutting of the mistletoe, she proclaims

herself a “seer”, an oracle that does not deliver the Gauls the hoped-for message of the “terribil Dio” – the “terrible god” – the god of bloody war, to commence battle. In the first part of her cavatina, the cantabile, Norma turns to the sovereign moon goddess in prayer, having reinstated her worship almost subversively, and asks her for peace. Above the expansive, sweeping motion of the violins, the melody first emerges in the flute, later accompanied by the oboe at an octave distance – as though the music were pantomimically interpreting the priestess’ sacred ritual. The melody itself exemplifies the “melodie lunghe, lunghe, lunghe” that even the elder Verdi admired. Unfurling with tense anticipation across several attempts over fifteen measures, it ascends using a motivic spinning technique to the high B” and finally culminates in that ecstatic sonic delirium – a technique of Bellini’s from which Wagner later took inspiration.

Subsequently, the choir repeats the verse in purely syllabic declamation, with Norma’s arabesque coloraturas providing an expression of magical transcendence.

Notation Example 1: “Casta diva”

When the sacred ritual is over, Norma is consumed by doubt; she can, as a priestess, punish the Romans – and thus also Pollione – but as a loving woman and

17

UWE SCHWEIKERT

mother, she wishes not to. Yet she is no longer sure of Pollione’s fidelity: “Ah, return to me / in the radiance of old love / and I will protect you / from the rest of the world.” The more animated, rhythmically tighter vocal declamation fits, on the one hand, into the formal requirement of a cabaletta that closes the scene, but on the other hand, also reflects the private world of her own emotions – Norma sings it, unusually for a cabaletta, as a solo (“a parte”) for herself.

Incidentally – and in contrast to what others have often written – I do not find that the cabaletta is somehow lacking in comparison to the slower prayer. Bellini here, as was quite customary at the time, drew on an older melody from his second opera, Bianca e Fernando, which some critics see as a mark against its quality.

Notation Example 2: “Ah! bello a me ritorna”

To reiterate, Norma’s entire scene does not fracture into two conflicting parts – here the priestess, there the lover, here duty, there inclination. As a priestess, as well as a woman and mother, Norma is imbued with the awareness and intention to serve not war and death but peace and life. Her utopia is one of a harmony of existence, with which she stands opposed to the god Irminsul, against the Druids, and indeed against her own people. This utopia is shattered

by Pollione’s infidelity.

Romani portrayed the title character in the libretto with remarkable dedication, and Bellini follows this with a musical radicalism that repeatedly leads him away from standardised conventions in his quest for dramatic precision. The first act does not end, as

is customary, with a grand ensemble piece, but with a trio, and the second act finishes not with a forceful aria for the leading lady but with a multi-part, almost through-composed scene, propelled by dynamic momentum, which might have led to the cold reception on the premiere evening. The proportion of arias is also significantly reduced, and, as in Norma’s opening scene, these arias are consistently woven into a musical-theatrical flow where both the chorus and other characters play an active role. Only Norma and Pollione are each granted a double aria. The role of Oroveso is limited to two brief arias, both embedded within a choral tableau.

Adalgisa must make do without a formal aria altogether. Nonetheless, Bellini has rendered the cantabile of the first duet between the two women as a solo in an exceptionally original way. When Adalgisa describes how she succumbed to the seduction by an unnamed man, Norma is reminded – almost as if speaking aside in recitative – of the beginning of her love for Pollione. The prerequisite for this was that Adalgisa had significantly more text, and Romani grouped her verses into stanzas that challenged the closed musical setting, while Norma spoke in endecasillabi, eleven-syllable lines, the traditional metre of recitative.

Notation Example 3: “Oh, rimembranza”

18

“... A MUSIC T H AT U N IT E S SONG &

DRAMA INTO A SINGLE WHOLE”

As the innocent third party in this erotic triangle, Adalgisa finds herself torn between Pollione and Norma and is consequently drawn into the conflict with both. Bellini elevates her musically, not only through her first duet with Norma but already in the preceding duet with Pollione – going beyond the libretto to establish her as a fully-fledged protagonist. He achieves this, firstly, by preceding her initial appearance with a long orchestral introduction in which the staccato figures of the first violins express her restlessness and nervousness, and in the extended duet for first flute and clarinet, her budding love for Pollione and, secondly, by detaching her final recitative verse “Deh! proteggimi, o Dio! perduta io son” (“Ah, protect me, o God: I am lost”) from the preceding verses and expanding it into an arioso of evocative intensity, as if she already foresees the impending doom.

In a similarly abrupt and equally brilliant manner, much like how Romani inserts Pollione’s cavatina between the introduction and the sacred ritual without comment, he situates Norma’s entry with her children between the two main duets in the first act – the one between Adalgisa and Pollione and the one between Adalgisa and Norma. At the same time, the inner restlessness of the two women carries on across the seemingly disparate threads of action in an impassioned allegro agitato passage, where the strings reclaim their dominant function. Like the ancient Medea, Norma is filled with conflicting emotions when she doubts Pollione’s love: “Amo in un punto ed odio / I figli miei!” (“I love and at the same time hate my children!”). This scene, which is treated somewhat casually as a recitative in the

libretto, also proves that Bellini does not lose sight of his vision for musical drama for even a moment. Romani and Bellini purposefully allow the scene to end without resolution as Clotilde and the children exit. Norma senses Pollione’s infidelity. Yet her certainty is confirmed only through Adalgisa’s confession and Pollione’s unexpected appearance, which leads to the trio finale of the first act. The storyline with the children is picked up again only at the beginning of the second act. In a sombre recitative monologue, during which the music repeatedly pauses hesitantly, Norma, “pale and marked by pain”, struggles with herself, dagger in hand, by her children’s bedside. Unlike Medea, who, driven by hatred of Jason, murders her children, Norma decides to save them and sacrifice herself. The formal yet entirely free arrangement Bellini uses has an exceptional musicaldramatic impact: forceful orchestral blows, expressive instrumental timbres like the mourning cello cantilena, and a speech of figures fluctuating between recitative reflection and arioso movement convey Norma’s psychodrama.

Again and again, the flow is interrupted. Both the music and the scenic dramaturgy are marked by discontinuous breaks in the storyline, imbued with the “explosive emptiness” which Luigi Nono, along with Stravinsky and Henze, a great admirer of the composer, highlighted as a hallmark of Bellini’s style.

Norma is a priestess, a lover, and an avenger. Pollione’s boundless betrayal drives her to boundless revenge. When his fate finally falls into her hands, she triumphs: “In mia man alfin tu sei” (“Finally, you are in my hand; no one can

19

UWE SCHWEIKERT

break your shackles. I might.”) Beneath the suddenly present, almost crackling quiet in which she voices her triumph through one of Bellini’s long yet almost syllabically precise melodies lies a tragic irony rarely seen in other operatic works.

Notation Example 4: “In mia man alfin tu sei”

As Pollione stands firm and refuses to renounce his love for Adalgisa – ”No: sì vil non sono” (“No: I am not so cowardly”) – Norma proceeds to threaten again, first with the murder of the children, then with the eradication of the Romans, and ultimately with Adalgisa’s death. Her inner turmoil erupts into furious coloraturas, practically shredding Adalgisa’s name with trills marked con furore. In truth, however, the decision had already been made when Norma recoiled from the ritual murder of Pollione, who had sacrilegiously entered the temple grounds. Pollione’s steadfastness – no matter how selfishly motivated – ultimately guides Norma toward making the decision for herself.

She refrains from blaming the innocent Adalgisa but instead offers herself as a sacrifice. Her final thought is for her children, who, in the light of the matrilineal gender order, are manifestations of her divine potency. Though she chooses to die on Irminsul’s pyre, she refuses to offer her children as a sacrificial atonement. She pleads with her father, Oroveso, to take pity on the children – born out of wedlock and fathered by the enemy of their people – and to protect them from the “barbarians”, in other words, the vengeance of their own

kin. Norma makes this decision – ” as if seized by a thought, she approaches her father” – both in Romani’s libretto and in Bellini’s musical interpretation, even prior to confessing any guilt. While she remains silent, the music of the first childhood scene rings out. Oroveso’s promise – ”Ha vinto amore” (“Love has triumphed”) – makes her “happy”, which can only imply dying without remorse in a sovereign act of self-sacrifice. In this triumph of love, Norma’s life’s doctrine is fulfilled, bringing about the restoration of the matriarchal rights she embodies. Bellini is not searching for metaphysical redemption; instead, he demands a clearly non-metaphysical, anti-psychological resolution to the conflict. For him, death does not triumph over life; instead, life prevails over death.

It is for this reason that he and Romani resisted the impresario’s suggestion to display the pyre on stage, as Romani’s widow Emilia Branca notes in her memoir, describing it as a “banal effect.”

In both the libretto and the score, the entire final scene is labelled as “Scena ultima ed aria finale.” While Bellini did not provide a title in the autograph manuscript, he did refer to the Norma/Pollione scene in his letters as a duet and described the finale as consisting of an ensemble piece and a stretta. Yet, he did not compose any of those. He rather combines the musical drama he shapes here from soloistic, dialogic, and ensemble sections of mostly unadorned simplicity into a coherent whole. Following Norma’s confession, a dreadful silence initially prevails.

Then she turns to Pollione: “Qual cor tradisti, qual cor perdisti / Quest’ora orrenda ti manifesti” (“Which heart you betrayed, which heart you lost / This dreadful hour reveals to you”). It is this

20

“... A MUSIC T H AT U N IT E S SONG &

DRAMA INTO A SINGLE WHOLE”

moment where Schopenhauer saw the sublime effect of a perfect tragedy. Bellini’s melody, which precisely articulates the words, underscores the precisely declaimed melody with few – yet highly effective – instrumental means, accompanying an unchanging rhythm. The gentle accents (“appena appoggiare”) placed on the third and fifth eighth notes in the lilting violin figures, as well as the ominous rolling of the timpani on the unaccented beat: “music of stillness and reconciliation at once”, as John Rosselli notes.

dentally, syncopated against the first and third beats of the four-beat measure. The choir enters only as the music changes from E minor to E major.

Bellini guides the ensemble to a climax through a powerful intensification of expression before the curse bursts forth musically in a vigorous allegro agitato assai, reverting to E minor. Bellini directs all elements of the musical drama towards a singular aim, which he shared in a letter to Carlo Pepoli, the librettist of his final opera I puritani: “In musical drama, the song should evoke tears, cause shudders, and bring one to the brink of death.”

Notation Example 5 “Qual cor tradisti”

The instrumental signals are similarly spoken, accompanying Norma’s distressing plea for her children’s lives: “Deh! non volerli vittima” (“Ah, do not let them become victims of my deadly mistake”). Bellini contrasts the impressive, almost unadorned melody with two minimal yet highly effective gestures: the restlessly repeated, sighlike triplet figure in the violins and the chime struck “a guisa di lamento” (“in the manner of a lament”) – both, inci-

Following pages: KS JUAN DIEGO FLÓREZ as POLLIONE

Notation Example 6 “Deh! Non volerli vittime”

21

SERGIO MORABITO

ON FELICE ROMANI’S & VINCENZO BELLINI’S NORMA In major opera productions, the analytical clarity in the reading of a source text and the sensual clarity in the unbridled use of theatrical technique are a source of mutual influence and enrichment.

In this process, the significance of the libretto’s verse, whose importance is underestimated by both theory and practice, plays a decisive role. Reference must be made to the testimony of the opera composers themselves. Giovanni Pacini, an occasional rival of Bellini, writes in his memoirs, “Incidentally, I believe that the discovery of new forms depends more on the librettist than on the composer.” In a letter, Bellini remarks, “The most difficult thing of all is to find subjects that offer novelty and interest. Yet, as I am convinced that the libretto forms the foundation of an opera, I deem the time spent searching to have been well invested.” Eduard Hanslick’s appreciation of Eugène Scribe, the most

impactful and frequently staged playwright of the 19th century, as the “creator of the modern opera,” was based on dramaturgical insight: “He indeed had the genius for those dramatic situations that paved new paths for music.”

The diversifying power of Italian libretto poetry, of which Richard Wagner – even at a distance – was very aware,* is misjudged. Bellini himself maintained a privileged working relationship with the most sought-after librettist of his epoch, Felice Romani, who was renowned for the masterful structure and the lyrical resonance of his works. He created the libretti for seven of Bellini’s ten operas, among them Il pirata (1827), La straniera (1829), La sonnambula (1831), as well as Norma (1831). The plot summary that Friedrich Lippmann (to whose musical analyses Bellini research owes decisive insights) offers – of what he himself calls “perhaps the best-written Italian

24

ON FELICE ROMANI’S & VINCENZO BELLINI’S NORMA

opera libretti of the first half of the 19th century” – must give pause for thought.

In Lippmann’s summary, Norma’s reluctance to commit infanticide is justified by the claim, “She still loves Pollione”, which blatantly ignores the wording of her monologue at the beginning of the second act, for Norma is only prevented from murder by the fact that these are also her children, not merely those of the now detested Pollione, as she tries to make herself believe. According to Lippmann, Pollione apprehended while attempting to abduct Adalgisa from the novices’ group, is to be “offered to the goddess of the Druids.” In truth, as we learn from the words of Oroveso and Norma, Pollione has “provoked the wrath of Irminsul,” and his alleged accomplice has “insulted the god of the ancestors”; even the Gallic chorus confirms that it is the “stern god” who demands punishment here, not the “chaste goddess” invoked by Norma in the first act.

Even in such a prominent scene as the second act finale of Norma, the precise narrative and dramaturgical dimension of Bellini’s operatic work is overlooked. Lippmann’s remarks are captivated by the traditional interpretation of the opera’s finale as a “love death” – an interpretation that represents a late Romantic throwback: Wagner, particularly in Tristan, drew on Bellini’s method, developed in the Norma finale, of chromatic-sequential cadence delay. The harmonious technique of tension and escalation has since been associated with the Paneroticism of the Wagnerian metaphysics of will. This led to a complete misunderstanding of the actual event the scene depicts, namely, that Norma is trying to compel her father to commit to the protection and care of her children.

According to Lippmann, in the end,

Norma is “united in death” with Pollione. If we examine the passage that Lippmann paraphrases in context, it becomes clear that Norma is not speaking to Pollione as a lover: the force that binds their destinies isn’t Pollione’s love, invoked in extremis, but rather destiny. Norma refuses to grant Pollione the sought-after absolution and acknowledges that he has lost her heart permanently: “Yes, forever.” In the drama’s final scene, while Pollione “observes the actions of Norma and Oroveso with excitement,” he is neither included nor implied. Despite Oroveso’s promise to spare the children, the fact that Pollione sings with Norma, “I want nothing more, I am happy, / content to ascend the pyre,” changes nothing. Norma and Pollione do not ascend the pyre side by side as Lippmann and countless other commentators assume.

The fact that Pollione verbally invokes such a mutual demise is an entirely different matter. The depicted objectivity of the events in the dialogues and stage directions remains beyond his influence. She – and she alone – receives the unequivocal call to climb the pyre: the burning is the punishment reserved for the perjured priestess. The stage direction “treading the path,” which underscores Norma’s farewell to her father, confirms her lonely walk to death. And as if further clarification were needed, Pollione’s cry after the retreating Norma, “Your pyre, Norma, is mine!” implies his desperate wishful thinking, continuing his plea “Oh, let us die together”: the words are an invocation, an attempt to find meaning, a final apology that he calls out to his wife, who has become unreachable to him both physically and emotionally. Through linguistic logic alone, it becomes clear

25

SERGIO MORABITO

that the response does not reflect an objective reality. Pollione’s last words, “There begins a sacred, an eternal love,” elicit no response from Norma, let alone a corresponding emotion. She doesn’t even listen to him: while Pollione is speaking, she is bidding farewell to her father. Her closing gaze is not towards him but towards her father, a glance that serves to remind him to fulfil his promise to the children.

NORMA Father, farewell!

She advances towards the pyre.

POLLIONE Your pyre is also mine.

There begins a purer, eternal love.

NORMA glancing back once again Father! Farewell!

OROVESO watches her Farewell! ...

Pollione’s cries cannot break the eye contact between the daughter and her father.

The survival of the children, to which the musical apotheosis of the opera is dedicated, is not mentioned by Lippmann at all. “Love has prevailed” – it is not the love of Pollione that is betrayed in this finale, but the love that can transcend fundamentalist, “barbaric” acts of violence against the innocent.

In Norma, the writers explored the conflict between a male or female-defined value system and society in religious-historical terms. The characters in this drama wage a battle between the moon goddess, whom Priestess Norma

is sworn to serve, and Irminsul, the god of war, to whose mere mouthpiece the Gallic warriors wish to degrade her.

This conflict can be traced throughout the entire piece. The play concludes the moment the Gauls have identified their true adversary, allowing their pent-up aggression to be unleashed against the saboteur of the war god Irminsul. It is the librettist’s achievement to have implanted the cult of the “chaste goddess” into the piece, which seemingly coexists with the cult of the Irminsul as a patriarchal instance but, in reality, has infiltrated and undermined it: the disempowered, exorcised Great Goddess has reclaimed her domain and moved back into her old temple along with the children. Through this portrayal, the Norma of the opera gains the status and grace of a goddess, as opposed to the traumatised, pathologised, and criminalised Norma in Alexandre Soumet’s drama. The frequently observed differences between opera and drama are ultimately due to the introduction of a cult of the moon goddess. Norma’s prayer to the “chaste goddess” stands as the operatic centrepiece, through which the priestess comes to embody the “figure of the ‘chaste goddess’ to whom she appeals” (Lippmann). This song is not a portrayal of Norma’s so-called “conflicted soul” but rather a representation of her spiritual aura and integrity. The elevation of prayers to the chaste goddess does not stand in contradiction to Norma’s invocation of her marital bond with Pollione. The chastity of the moon goddess is not one imposed by external forces or dictated by patriarchal ownership but rather one rooted in a matriarchal order of marriage. For Norma, having borne two children is a fulfilment, not a negation, of her calling as a priest-

26

ON FELICE ROMANI’S & VINCENZO BELLINI’S NORMA

ess, though it is often seen otherwise.

In Norma, the line of conflict is located differently from the traditional division between Roman occupiers and Gallic rebels. Presumably, it makes no difference to the druidess whether the Gallic warriors or the Roman conquerors take charge. With her readiness for self-sacrifice, Norma transforms into a moral figure, forcing the men Pollione and Oroveso towards repentant conversion.

Influenced by Norma’s sovereignty, Pollione admits his despicable failure, and Oroveso, Soumet’s fundamentalist hardliner, becomes an accomplice to the betrayal of his daughter against the Gallic laws of war by promising to turn Norma’s concern for the survival of her children into his own.

It is notable when Bellini and Ro­ mani choose to abandon the topos of the madness scene where the source material suggests it. Norma is the most striking example of an early 19th-century opera that intentionally and explicitly dismisses such an option.

In the fifth act of Soumet’s tragedy, the fundamentalism of Norma’s father, Oroveso, drives his guilt-ridden daugh-

ter to a rampage. The self-disintegrating woman condemns herself: Her internalised feelings of guilt drive her to madness, to murder her two children, and to commit suicide; hence the subtitle of the tragedy: L’Infanticide or Child Murder. In contrast, the Norma of the opera does everything she can to secure the future of her two children even after her death. This is, of course, not an isolated decision by the opera creators, but it aligns with the radical reworking they’ve applied to the original play. The opera transforms the child-murderess from the drama into an advocate for a matriarchal system, successfully convincing her father to join in an act of sabotage against the patriarchy before her execution: Oroveso agrees to become an accomplice to his daughter’s transgression by promising to take care of her children – fathered by an enemy of the land – rather than delivering them to the fury of his own people.

The second finale of this opera is not a celebration of the parents’ broken love, as is so persistently misunderstood, but rather about the salvation of the children.

* “ So formulaic the Italian opera compositional style appears, I have still found that every­thing makes a more proper impact when the text is understood than when it is not; since precisely the knowledge of the process and the states of the soul serves to effectively counteract the monotony of musical expression.” (On Operatic Poetry and Composition in Particular, 1879)

27

Following pages: KS ILDEBRANDO D’ARCANGELO

as OROVESO FEDERICA LOMBARDI as NORMA CHILDREN of the OPERA SCHOOL of the VIENNA STATE OPERA

FA BR IZIO DELL A SETA

PERSONAL

UNION OF COMPOSER AND PLAYWRIGHT Both Bellini’s compositions and his persona were, during his lifetime, perceived as novel within the world of Italian opera by audiences and critics alike.

The innovative traits in the composer’s personality are particularly evident in his professional and artistic self-conception. As a professional musician, Bellini was a typical product of the bourgeois-liberal era, even though he came from the less developed part of Italy. Prior to Giuseppe Verdi, he was the only composer who, instead of capitalising on immediate opportunities, strategically planned his career in the long run and knew how to exploit the earning possibilities of the theatre system.

He did this by not accepting every new proposal but relying on the repetition of a small number of successful works.

Between 1825 and 1835, Bellini composed only ten operas, a stark contrast to his contemporaries: Donizetti wrote 32, Mercadante 23, and Pacini 18 within the same period. This relatively slow creative pace corresponded to unusually well-structured creative processes for the time, as clearly reflected in the surviving corrections and revisions of his scores.

Bellini compensated for the small number of his works through skilful negotiations with impresarios, earning considerably more than Rossini.

Bellini also recognised the financial opportunities presented by the emerging music publishing industry. Bellini’s efforts to protect the artistic integrity of his operas were innovative: he sought to prevent unauthorised repetitions and alterations to his orchestrations, which were often derived from piano reductions, and he publicly advocated for stricter copyright laws.

His artistic self-conception was also evident in his explicitly stated ambition to establish himself as the foremost opera composer with a style that was personal and original. He adopted elements from Rossini, which he deemed important for his style, without, however, succumbing to outright imitation as other Italian composers of that era did. The specifics of his compositional style, deviating from Rossini, are seen in a return to the principles of the Italian tradition from the late 18 th century. Bellini prioritised simple and expressive melodies, reduced vocal virtuosity, limited the

30

PERSONAL UNION OF COMPOSER AND PLAYWRIGHT

orchestra to an accompanying role – largely forgoing Rossini’s brilliant style – and carefully engaged with the precise and expressive declamation of the poetic text in both recitatives and lyrical sections. In doing so, he draws inspiration from Giovanni Paisiello and Nicola Zingarelli, possibly under the influence of Italian adaptations of French models in Naples. In his work La straniera, he almost entirely abandoned coloraturas, adhering strictly to a syllabic and declamatory style.

However, since the simple, unadorned melodic line of La straniera offered Bellini limited developmental possibilities, he reintroduced coloraturas in subsequent operas, not to transcend the word through music as in Rossini, but as expressive tools for specific situations and emotions such as rapture, anger, and despair. The ornamented singing became a register that could be contrasted with or combined with prose recitative, non-strophic arioso, syllabic and declamatory singing, and extended cantabile. The vocal style was only one element of the melodic inventiveness that was, as early as the 19th century, already regarded as distinctive of Bellini’s work. His melodies impressed figures as diverse as Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, and Giuseppe Verdi, standing out for both their simplicity and their distinct character. This character corresponded to the emotional content of the dramatic situation, with broad melodic arcs extending over eight to sixteen mea­ sures, their division into phrases and sub-phrases, and the regularity of the model often remaining hidden. However, this regularity was sometimes abandoned in favour of structures composed of units of varying lengths,

the unexpected introduction of new melodic figures, or the delay of the final cadence (e.g., in the aria Casta Diva). Another typical feature was the frequent use of a fundamental technique of musical Romanticism: the longing character of Bellini’s melodies essentially resulted from the use of a major chord on the third degree, which “yearns” for the fourth degree.

While Bellini’s vocal style was widely praised, his instrumentation and harmonic design were often criticised. However, even his early work Adelson e Salvini demonstrates that Bellini possessed great inventiveness in polyphonic writing and the handling of complex harmonies, consistent with the expressive standards of Italian opera. These compositional tools come together as parts of a comprehensive concept, always serving dramatic expression, arising, in turn, primarily from the singing. The harmonic structure served to underline and emphasise the singing – especially in the recitatives. Dissonances or even normal harmonic progressions, when skillfully positioned, enrich the expression of emotion.

Moreover, the orchestration must be appraised in relation to the dramatic functionality of the chosen melodic style. Bellini’s conscious decisions regarding orchestration are evident in a statement to Francesco Florimo in 1835 concerning a possible adaptation of Norma in the style of I puritani for a planned Paris performance: “In some places, it can be attempted, but overall, it will be impossible for me due to the smooth and flowing nature of the cantilenas, which allow no other kind of instrumentation than the existing one: I have con-

31

FA BR IZIO DELL A SETA

sidered it thoroughly” (Letter dated August 13, 1835). Bellini’s contribution to orchestration consists of using an obbligato instrument in each of his operas – usually a wind instrument – that adopts the characteristics of the human voice and anticipates or echoes the melodic line, providing a form of commentary or elaboration of the melody. Although Bellini was not the first composer to use this technique, he had an extraordinary sense for individualising a melody through characteristic instrumental timbres and, in so doing, established new standards for opera composers over sub­ sequent decades.

Bellini, like most of his contemporaries, shows the greatest affinity to Rossini in how he adopted the formal structure of the “numbers”.

In his operas, he consistently applied standardised models for arias, ensembles, and finales based on the cantabile-cabaletta framework. Only in certain cases did he employ a freer structure that more easily adapted to the dramatic action, such as in the final duet of I Capuleti e i Montecchi, which consists of a sequence of ariosi.

In 19th-century performance practice, it was often replaced by the death scene from Giulietta e Romeo (Milan, 1825) by Nicola Vaccai, whose structure better suited a traditional opera finale. Following the example of Rossini’s later operas, Bellini’s innovation in formal structure is evident in his tendency to create large scenic and musical tableaux in which multiple pieces are combined and connected by recurring motifs and keys.

A reevaluation of the musical techniques used by Bellini, in light of their dramaturgical significance, allows for a

revision of the central tenet of modern Bellini criticism, which is also linked to the traditional image of the composer and the reception history of his oeuvre.

In a 1915 essay, Ildebrando Pizzetti was the first to describe Bellini as more of a “lyricist” than a “dramatist”. The idealistic music criticism, starting from defining Bellini as the “lirico puro”, constructed an image of the composer whose dramatic development occurs entirely within and who ignores the constraints of theatrical practice. At the same time, this perpetuated the idealised 19th-century image of Bellini as a composer with an almost divine gift for creating melodies. A contemporary look at his biography and character indicates quite the reverse: Bellini was undeniably a “man of the theatre.” His training, his professional demeanour, and the organisation of musical life in the 19th century made him a musician whose creative process was very much defined by stage performances. As with other opera composers of his era, Bellini was required to organise the opera projects with the librettist; he composed the pieces while considering the strengths of the designated singers, attended or conducted rehearsals right up until the debut performance, and “supervised” revivals, occasionally making amendments.

Since the early 1960s, musicologically-oriented criticism has led to a reevaluation of Bellini’s œuvre.

He was found to be a composer who, besides his three repertoire compositions La sonnambula, Norma, and I puritani, dealt with a variety of very different themes, through which he accomplished compact dramatic structures, passionate fervour, and a sense of bitterness. His works encom-

32

PERSONAL UNION OF COMPOSER AND PLAYWRIGHT

pass the full range of deep “romantic” emotions.

From today’s perspective, Bellini must be regarded as a music dramatist in a broader sense, as he stood out among the other composers of his generation in consciously addressing the demands for the renewal of Italian musical theatre, pursuing the direction Rossini had laid out with his Neapolitan works. In this regard, Bellini’s expansion of the musical “numbers” to greater dimensions is noteworthy. The integrity of the scene segments becomes clear when one attempts to cut parts from them or change the sequence of the pieces, proving nearly impossible. Bellini was among the first to aim to imbue each opera with a distinctive character, setting it apart from the others. For this, the term “tinta” (colouring) was coined in his time, referring to the deliberate coordination of all musical elements. Through musical and stylistic unity, Bellini ensured that each opera presented a central human conflict clearly and coherently without digressions, embodied primarily by the vocal presence of the characters on stage.

For contemporary musicology, the question arises as to how much of the dramatic coherence in Bellini’s works can be attributed to him personally or to what extent it was already predetermined by the librettist’s decisions. This is also of interest because the composer worked very consistently with Felice Romani, a well-seasoned dramatist.

Just a handful of letters capture the working rapport between the pair, yet examining a select few handwritten libretti – most notably those from Norma – hints at Bellini’s personal involvement in formulating the dramatic composition of the text. This is also evidenced by the fact that the libretti for Bellini, in contrast to Romani’s numerous other works (over 100 for various composers), are characterised by homogeneous, straightforward, and dramatically efficient figures.

Bellini was the first in the history of Italian opera to embody the personal union of composer and dramatist, assuming comprehensive responsibility in the sense of a Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art.

33

A COLLECTIVE SIGNATURE THE DIRECTOR AND HIS TEAM

TALK ABOUT THEIR WORK ON NORMA

cyril teste Norma tells the story of a family, a very particular family. A theme that is present in every family is the secret. Norma is secretly in love with an enemy of her country. This union produces two children, whose parentage cannot be revealed. At the heart of this gripping story is a very strong woman: she is the spiritual leader, the priestess of her people, but she also has a political function. And she is both mother and lover. Her character incorporates many different aspects of the female identity.

This very, very strong, very complex woman is however at the mercy of an extremely patriarchal system against which she must assert herself. She seeks freedom – her personal freedom, in a patriarchal structure.

Key elements of the story are that which is sacred and spirituality. Today we live in a capitalist social system in which the spiritual dimension is growing progressively weaker and is in danger of disappearing. Norma could offer us guidance to answer the question of the form of spirituality that is still available to us today. She offers a key to spirituality as well as to the element of secrecy. The theme of the big, second finale of the opera is the secret being passed on: Norma entrusts her illegiti-

mate children, conceived with an enemy of her people, to their father, but under the cloak of secrecy. She knows that if the identity of her two children were revealed, they would be slaughtered by their own fanatical compatriots.

We find this time and again, that when you have two societies, two nations at war with each other, two individual people will find their way together and produce children. These offspring, these children represent the possible connection between two apparently mutually exclusive cultures.

They embody this utopian connection.

I believe a key factor here is that the quest for peace is an absolute priority for Norma. This is fitting, because she herself is of course experiencing conflict – in her private life – but she is publicly committed to maintaining or restoring peace. After Salome, it makes a lot of sense for me to advocate for another very strong, controversial female character by staging this opera here in Vienna. To defend precisely this value and the value of her freedom. valérie grall I am a scenographer; my background is architecture, and I studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. I met a scenographer early on, and it was as a result of this connec-

34

A COLLECTIVE SIGNATURE

tion that my relationship with theatre developed, namely through the work of Peter Brook. My next career focus was scenography for film, for the cinema. That’s how I met Cyril Teste, with whom I have now been working for several years. It was Cyril Teste’s interest in cinematography that brought us together: he conceived of a very special form of theatre. The live camera image plays an important role in his productions.

It is a balancing act that we have been working on together for several years now. The temporality, materiality and aesthetics of a film image are very different from those in the theatre. We address this fine line in our joint projects. The goal of combining these two genres is to create images that are magical and radiate great poetry. This is why our two cinematographers must also be mentioned here: Mehdi Toutain-Lopez and Nicolas Doremus, who develop the aesthetics of the video images and direct the live camera. Both will play a major role in Norma.

The goal was to create a space that has both a sacred dimension or sacred potential, and at the same time is extremely concrete, formulated in a very tangible way. We wanted to avoid it clearly being set chronologically in a specific year or place, but rather to represent a model of a war scenario where people are seeking refuge. For example, in desecrated churches or in factory buildings, where a civilian population exposed to war is looking for protection. We see that nature quickly takes over these abandoned, re-purposed, dilapidated spaces. We were rather surprised to find that the two dimensions that are crucial to Norma’s story are united in these spaces: the war scenario,

the destruction of urban spaces, and at the same time nature. ct In Ukraine, we saw how these public spaces suddenly became places of refuge. People live in subway tunnels.

They hide in theatres, train stations and also in sacred buildings. However, it is not faith or a practised religion that takes them there. It is the need for protection. What is lost is private spaces, the possibility of taking refuge in a private area. Basically, these spaces are inhabited by communities in need, communities with a shared fate, who have gathered there. There is nowhere else for these people to retreat to. Forests serve a similar function and are of comparable importance as a place of refuge.

There are two very difference faiths.

Each of these religions has developed a very different space, and both are present in the stage design. The opera itself takes place in a pre-Christian era, at the time when Gaul, i.e. France, was occupied by the Romans. But two very different concepts of faith collide here.

On the one hand, there is the faith of the Romans, portrayed in stonework and in architecture, and on the other hand, the nature-focused religion of the Gauls. vg I too draw attention to connections. The temple architecture is based on the concept of the column and the column is an architecturally recreated tree trunk. ct Valérie and I feel very connected to the Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky in our work. We integrate the cinematographic image into the stage space. We have a transparent projection surface and can at the same time follow the live-camera images and the creation of the projected images through it.

The different scales are very interesting. The image of Norma’s children is

35

THE DIRECTOR AND HIS TEAM

projected across the entire proscenium arch, Norma herself appears on a much smaller scale. This is a way of showing the mental dimension, the extent to which Norma’s thoughts and emotions are with her children. For me, the cinematic dimension is mainly linked to the children.

But other mental images also come into play. Two deities are invoked in Norma. The god of war, Irminsul, and the moon goddess, the goddess of peace and fertility. Irminsul is often depicted as a pillar or worshipped as a tree trunk.

Here an oak tree represents him, as required by the stage directions. We quote the totem pole, that represents Irminsul, on an LED wall.

The most famous aria in this piece, “Casta Diva”, accompanies a ritual: the ritual of cutting mistletoe. We also discussed rituals and the question of how to dress for such rituals. marie la rocca My discussions with Cyril mainly involve exchanging images. One that became the starting point for the whole concept is an image of women dancing with very characteristic head scarves. A second starting point is an image from the Spanish Civil War. These are images that show the link between femininity and willingness to fight. I started with women’s personal clothing, but this is complemented by certain accessories: pieces of uniform, equipment, weapons. This connection is also the basis for Norma’s costume. She wears a woman’s dress with a trench coat over it. Her head scarf identifies her affiliation with a particular religious community.

We were looking for very, very specific costumes. It was not the symbolic exaggeration that was important to us, but the actual readability of our

settings. The only stylized element is the oversized scarves – tuckers, head scarves, whatever we want to call them, which are important in the ritual of invoking the “Casta Diva.” The result is a relatively differentiated costume design, which is also important because sixty-six chorus members are involved in this opera, and you have to create visual interest. Our aim was to create something that does not relate to a specific time or place like a documentary.

However, we do restrict ourselves to the 20th century. The inspiration, the photographic images that I use, are largely drawn from the 1930s. I also integrated a lot of vintage and second-hand clothing in the costume design. But it is very difficult to find original clothing from the 1930s. So, these vintage pieces are more from the post-war period. They are a mix of different eras. ct The costumes that Marie develops always have a scenic dimension and implication. The photo with the dancing women prompted me to reach out to a choreographer – Magda Chowaniec, who also choreographed Salome‘s dance. This photo gave me the idea. ml Since we also have the wonderful workshops of the Vienna State Opera at our disposal, we had to decide how exactly these scarves should be designed.

It was not an option for us to simply buy sixty-six scarves on special offer somewhere. We also did not want simply to copy or adapt a certain folklore design, such as Russian head scarves. Then I suggested designing the shawls as a map showing Norma’s territory. This goes back to the Second World War, when pilots wore such scarves. If they survived a crash, they could use this map to find their way. Norma’s territory is highly forested. So I researched pri-

36

A COLLECTIVE SIGNATURE

marily cartographic representations of forest landscapes. During my research, certain colours and aspects emerged that became important. I then prepared paper samples, which were passed on to the workshops here in Vienna. The motif is the same on all the scarves, only the scale is different. I developed the design, the graphic of the head scarf, in Paris. This was then digitally converted to the various requested dimensions by an employee here in Vienna. In fact, there is only one company in Germany that is able to print fabric like this on both sides without causing minor shifts. The scarves printed in Germany were then returned to Vienna, where the fringe was added. The scarves are made of a fabric – crepe polyester – that is very much like silk. We decided on this option because silk is very difficult and very expensive to print on. ct Marie left nothing to chance.

This applies to all aspects of this performance, the scenography, the stage design, the video image. We didn‘t want to focus solely on the decoration but were looking for the significance of it. ml While the area has been subjected to destruction and decline, we deliberately refrained from giving the costumes any specific patina. The space is like a shrine in which the costumes add colour accents, but are not naturalistic, one-to-one, an extension of this “shrine.”

Adalgisa also wears a head scarf as a sign of her affiliation with the cult of the moon goddess. But the cut, the exact style of her clothing tells us that Adalgisa is a younger woman than Norma.

With Pollione and Flavio, the Romans, we wanted to create an imaginary uniform. The idea was not to copy the appearance of a specific historical army,

but rather to bring together elements from very different contexts to create something rather more generic. Oroveso is also a spiritual leader, a Druid, he is Norma’s father.

To show this, his costume reveals a certain costliness with the colours and materials used, even though he too is fighting a war alongside all the others.

The men’s chorus are all Gauls; only two Roman prisoners appear, besides with Pollione and Flavio. The Gauls are divided into Druids and resistance fighters. The women‘s chorus includes Druids, fighters and nurses. ct Collective development is enormously important in this project. All the styles that come together in the production, the styles of Marie, Valérie, Mehdi and Nicolas, shape and mould this performance. I dislike the idea of the all-powerful, all-knowing director who anticipates all decisions. My work is also deeply influenced and shaped by collaboration with and the creativity of my team. By the way, there is also an olfactory dimension here. There was one in Salome too. I collaborate with the perfumer Francis Kurkdijan, who has been developing scents for me for many years for certain productions. The use of fragrances is of crucial importance for spiritual and religious rituals. The dimension of the forest is also enhanced with aromas. A scent card is included in this programme booklet so that you all have one. Norma’s scent will stay with you after the performance. Humidity plays an important role with the scent, large coniferous forests, a very earthy, mushroomy note. One association is primeval forests. This is a very synesthetic approach, conveyed through all the senses. For me, this is another important aspect of the theatre experience.

37

FEDERICA LOMBARDI as NORMA

IMPRINT VINCENZO BELLINI

NORMA SEASON 2024/25 PREMIÈRE OF THE PRODUCTION 22 FEBRUARY 2025 Publisher WIENER STAATSOPER GMBH, Opernring 2, 1010 Wien Director DR. BOGDAN ROŠČIĆ Music Director PHILIPPE JORDAN Administrative Director DR. PETRA BOHUSLAV General Editors SERGIO MORABITO, ANDREAS LÁNG, OLIVER LÁNG, ADELE BERNHARD Design & concept EXEX Layout & typesetting MIWA MEUSBURGER Printed by PRINT ALLIANCE HAV PRODUKTIONS GMBH, BAD VÖSLAU TEXT & IMAGE REFERENCES Cover image: Petecia Le Fawnhawk. Cover image concept: Martin Conrads, Berlin. Performance photos: Michael Pöhn/Wiener Staatsoper GmbH. ORIGINAL TEXTS Sergio Morabito, Synopsis / On Felice Romani’s & Vincenzo Bellini’s ‘Norma’, English translations by Paul Talbot – Michele Mariotti, The Music beyond the Score, English translation by Andrew Smith – Cyril Teste, Valérie Grall, Marie La Rocca, A Collective Signature. The director and his team talk about their work on ‘Norma’, English translation by Andrew Smith. ADDITIONAL TEXTS Uwe Schweikert, “… A Music that unites Song & Drama into a Single Whole”, lecture given on 19th February 2003 at Theater Basel – Fabrizio della Seta, Personal Union of Composer and Playwright, taken from Vincenzo Bellini, MGG Online. English translations by Paul Talbot. Cuts are not marked.

Reproduction only with approval of Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Dramaturgy. Holders of rights who were unavailable regarding retrospect compensation are requested to make contact.

This production is sponsored by Printed according to the guidelines of the Austrian Ecolabel “Printed Products”, Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, Bad Vöslau, UW-No. 715

Culture moves you.

OMV and the Vienna State Opera have a long-standing partnership.

Our commitment goes far beyond the stage. We actively support young people and projects for new talent and provide access to art and culture for young people. Together we are shaping an inspiring future.

Find all partnerships at: omv.com/sponsoring

Make it happen

Make culture happen

Culture is an essential aspect of our society, and it holds a prominent position in influencing our thoughts, actions, and social connections. We are committed to supporting established cultural institutions, young talents, and novel initiatives, which enables us to strengthen the widest possible diversity of art and culture in our home markets, including Austria and Central and Eastern Europe.

PITS AND BALCONIES? EXACTLY OUR WORLD. STRABAG: Proud supporter of the Vienna State Opera

GARANY, SUSTAINABILITY COORDINATOR

Open Spotify app, scan code and listen to Norma playlist

WIENER-STAATSOPER.AT