Norma

Ninth among the 11 operas Bellini wrote over his decade of composing for the stage, Norma is a tragedia lirica with profound consequences for the evolution of the genre. Commissioned by Milan’s La Scala and premiered there on 26 December 1831, the libretto by Felice Romani centres on the Gallic uprising against Roman occupation in the first century BCE and a fraught love triangle with Norma, the high priestess of the Druids. Arguably more than any of his other operas, Norma exemplifies Bellini’s bel canto ability to write long and unbroken melodic lines in which form and expression are as one through the perfect fusion of music with text. Its most famous number, “Casta diva” (“Chaste goddess”), sung by Norma to the moon in a plea for peace, typifies this seamless eloquence as well as the technical demands placed on the singer. Although the first night was only a partial success, the opera received another 33 performances in its first season alone. Wagner, who conducted an 1837 staging in Riga, thought it Bellini’s signal achievement—the equilibrium between words and music a likely blueprint for his later music dramas. The title role has attracted many of the most renowned sopranos over the past two centuries, not least Rosa Ponselle, Maria Callas, Montserrat Caballé and Cecilia Bartoli.