VINCENZO BELLINI
NORMA
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
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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
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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
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