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O P E R A N O T E S | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O
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January 28 - February 24, 2017
heroine at the center, whether the sad
noblewomen – Beatrice, Imogene in
Il pirata
,
and Alaide in
La straniera
; Giulietta, in love
with Romeo, in
I Capuleti e i Montecchi
; or
the demure young sleepwalker Amina in
La
sonnambula
. With
Norma,
however, Bellini
and Romani created a much stronger, more
determined, more vigorous figure than any
of these – a woman of stature, a leader,
someone possessing true gravitas, whose every
utterance rivets the listener.
By the time of
Norma
, any new opera
by Bellini had taken on the status of a major
event in Italian musical life. This particular
commission earned the composer 12,000
lire, an astronomical sum for a single opera
at the time. It came from La Scala and was
a plum assignment, in that it coincided
with Milan’s 1831 carnival season. It was
Romani who brought to Bellini’s attention
the dramatic source on which the text was
based. This was a verse drama,
Norma, ou
l’infanticide
(
Norma, or the Infanticide
), by
Alexandre Soumet, a major Paris-based poet
and playwright of the time. Adept at works
on a grand scale, Soumet (whose talent had
been recognized with induction into the
Académie Française in 1824) premiered
the work in April of 1831. The same year,
the day after Christmas, Bellini’s opera
premiered. That gives an idea of just how
quickly composers and librettists worked in
that era, Italy’s so-called “golden century” of
Italian opera.
La Scala cast the piece royally. Starring
in the title role was Giuditta Pasta, something
of a muse for Bellini. The composer’s own
character had a rather hard shell about it,
but Pasta’s portrayal of the Druid priestess
reduced him to tears. Pasta was not only
a contralto who had extended her range
upward to sing prima-donna soprano roles.
It’s fascinating to remember that earlier in
1831, the same year in which she created
Norma, she had also premiered Bellini’s
vocally much lighter Amina. Given Pasta’s
own qualities as a vocalist, it seems clear
that for Norma – a role with a performance
history abounding with hefty dramatic
sopranos – Bellini wanted to ensure a degree
of the lightness and flexibility of Amina. On
An artist’s rendering of
Giuditta Pasta’s Norma.