Think you know
Norma? Think again. Just as
she did with her 2008
Sonnambula,
Cecilia Bartoli has set out to challenge all of our preconceptions about
Bellini’s opera. The intention was to recreate the piece to be
as close as it is reasonably possible to get to how it must have sounded
when it was first performed in the 1830s. In her very well researched
booklet note, Bartoli notes that the 1830s had a very different, much
more flexible concept of voice type to us and that the singers who were
most closely associated with the role of Norma in the 1830s, namely
Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran, were famous for singing a lot of
parts that we would today call mezzo-soprano roles. This challenges
the late 20
th-century, post-Romantic conception of Norma
as a role for a high dramatic soprano, most famously exemplified by
Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland in the 1950s and 1960s. As with her
Amina, Bartoli argues a persuasive case that Norma works for a mezzo,
though there are obvious losses with some of the climactic high notes,
more of which below. In addition, Bartoli points out that the first
Adalgisa was also the singer for whom Bellini wrote the role of Elvira
in
I Puritani, so she follows this logic through by giving Adalgisa
to the high coloratura soprano of Sumi Jo, thus reversing the poles
of the opera as we have become used to them, though Bartoli points out
that, from the point of view of register and virtuosity, the differences
between Norma and Adalgisa are not all that substantial. This role reversal
is combined with a new critical edition and an orchestra of period instruments
to cast the opera in a whole new light.
It is, in fact, the orchestra who are the biggest surprise - and in
many ways the biggest asset - of the recording. In the
tuttis
there is a metallic clang to their sound that is reminiscent of the
Turkish music in Mozart’s
Entführung - just listen
to the opening bars of the overture to see what I mean - which is very
surprising but really refreshing. The overture itself goes at a fair
lick - as does most of the rest of the opera, a result of the creative
team’s extensive research into Bellinian performance practice.
This helps to inject excitement and tension into the proceedings so
that you are never in any doubt that this is a drama of tension and
excitement. These rapid tempi also carry the incidental benefit that
each of the two acts appears complete on one CD. There is also a lovely
transparency to the sound made by Zurich’s Orchestra La Scintilla.
That’s partly a result of the instruments they choose - the earthy
rasp of the brass - and the well captured recording. A decision has
clearly been made to allow the earthy thwack of the period timpani to
stand out in the texture. There are also the decisions of conductor
Giovanni Antonini who puts a lot of air around the sound at certain
key moments. Listen, for example, to the major key section at the end
of the overture which returns as part of the
Guerra! guerra!
chorus in Act 2: it is as bright, spacious and airy as the rest of the
prelude had been zingy and exciting. The climaxes are never less than
thrilling, such as the orchestral
tutti that introduces Norma’s
first appearance or the march music that ends Pollione’s duet
with Adalgisa. The choice of period instruments, such as the wooden
transverse flute in the introduction to
Casta Diva, helps to
cast the colours of the work in a refreshing new light.
What of the singing? Well, it’s certainly different to what you’ll
be used to, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily
like it. Bartoli herself is never less than commanding in the title
role. Her opening
Sediziose voci, for example, is marvellously
imperious, for all the lightness of the voice and the lower pitch. However,
I was never entirely convinced that she was seeing the role from the
inside. For all her research and her revelations into performance practice,
she never sounded quite right to my ears, which have, admittedly, been
conditioned by years of listening to Callas and Sutherland. The thrilling
ring of the top notes pinged out at the end of scenes was, in most cases,
entirely missing. OK, those high notes may not be precisely authentic,
but they sure are thrilling. I couldn’t shake the thought that
Norma loses something without that opportunity for extrovert
vocal display. The end of the great cabaletta
Ah! bello a me ritorna,
for example, passes for almost nothing, with Norma’s voice all
but subsumed into the overall texture. Don’t those high notes
show another aspect of the priestess’s almost superhuman character,
after all?
More troublingly for me, I’ve often been bothered in the past
by a warble, almost a yodel that has a habit of creeping into Bartoli’s
voice. It bothered me quite a bit here. Often I just wanted her to sing
the note with clarity and beauty - it’s
bel canto, after
all - and not worry about the rest. When she does that, such as in
Casta
Diva, she sounds fantastic, but that “yodel” creeps
into many of the recitatives, presumably as a misguided attempt to inject
more drama into the exchanges; I found it very off-putting. The two
places it does work well are her hysterical denunciation of Pollione
when she first finds out about his affair with Adalgisa, and the recitative
that opens Act 2, where she considers murdering her children. In those
instances all the technique is used to enhance the drama. Bartoli is
undoubtedly a wonderful actress, and that comes across very well in
this recording, but she is sometimes in danger of being a finer dramatist
than she is a musician.
Sumi Jo, however, is a delightful Adalgisa. Here the part definitely
gains from being sung by an unorthodox choice of register. Her light,
pearly soprano points up the character’s innocence, and the contrasting
gentleness of her first entrance is most effective after the mezzo-soprano
drama of the preceding scene. She never seems to stand a chance against
the appeals of Pollione in the first scene, but she is wonderfully tender
as she recounts to Norma the beginning of her love for him in the great
duet of the next scene. In fact, the duets for Norma and Adalgisa are
the finest vocal moments of the set. The two voices seem to slot together
magically so as to make them almost indistinguishable and, in these
cases, it doesn’t seem to matter who is the soprano and who is
the mezzo.
John Osborn, who impressed me hugely in the
Netherlands
Opera’s I
Puritani, takes on Pollione. The tessitura holds no terrors
for him, but I couldn’t shake the doubt that he was making his
voice a little
too light for the character. It is true that,
as Bartoli points out in the booklet notes, the tenor was a very different
creature in Bellini’s day, much lighter and more flexible, and
Osborn’s interpretation is in keeping with that. However, it just
didn’t excite me. Pollione is meant to be a daredevil seducer
after all and, innately musical as Osborn’s performance is, he
never quickened my pulse in the way you get when you hear the role sung,
however inauthentically, by Corelli, Del Monaco or Pavarotti. However,
like so much else in this recording, you just need to get over your
preconceptions and leave them at the door. I may not enjoy Osborn’s
style as much in this recording, but I’ll happily admit that he
is very good at it, and the
leggiero flexibility that he brings
to the role is certainly a refreshing change. He also uses his voice
admirably to point up the drama in different ways and different contexts.
His entrance aria, for example, is intimate and fairly light as he describes
his dream of Adalgisa in Rome, but when the cabaletta begins he finds
a newly extrovert register to his voice and ends that scene with a thrillingly
heroic flourish. He also rises to the challenge of the final scene,
and his climactic duet with Norma brings out the best in both characters,
their antipathy finally turning back into love and a recognition of
what they have lost in one another.
Qual cor tradisti is fantastic,
Osborn singing in an almost half-voice as he contemplates the scale
of what he has done, while Bartoli taps into all her reserves of wounded
humanity. Antonini then slows up dramatically for the final ensemble,
lending extra dignity to Norma’s plea for her children. It’s
a magnificent end to the piece, even if it lacks those cresting top
notes.
Michele Pertusi is an ideal choice for Oroveso. He has a rich, sonorous
boom to his voice which is notable on any occasion but especially so
when he keeps the company of period instruments and performance practice.
He oozes authority as the chief druid but is also able to evoke vestiges
of sympathy for his daughter’s fate in the final scene. Only occasionally
does he sound a little stretched in the lowest registers of the role,
undoubtedly a result of performing it at 430 Hz, notably lower than
the standard modern concert pitch of 440 Hz.
It’s worth saying a word about the edition, too, which has been
scrupulously researched by Maurizio Biondi and Riccardo Minasi. There
aren’t many major changes, but it restores a few passages here
and there and cuts a few extraneous ones that have crept in over the
years. It’s all of a piece with making this recording as close
as it is possible for us to get (at present) to how
Norma must
have sounded to Bellini’s own ears.
It will remain fundamentally a personal choice, however, as to whether
this is a
Norma that you will want to live with. It will take
a place on my shelf as the “other”
Norma, but for
the sheer vocal thrills that so excited me when I first got to know
the opera, I will always go back to Sutherland in 1964 or Callas in
1960: deeply flawed but still magnificent. If Bartoli’s is the
new norm for
Norma then I can thank her for bringing the opera
back into the contemporary spotlight, but I can’t stop myself
from yearning for the great interpreters of the past who made the role
so immortally thrilling.
The presentation, by the way, is up to Bartoli’s usual very high
standard: there are four essays together with full texts and translations
and a range of colour photographs of the sessions and rehearsals, all
packaged within a special hard-back book which will look very handsome
on your shelves.
Simon Thompson
