Opera Company's "Norma' (2nd review)

The road not taken (and just as well)

JIM RUTTER

In the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s current production of Bellini’s Norma, director Kay Walker Castaldo chose the traditional setting—the aftermath of the Gallic Wars.

With the libretto’s subplot of an oppressed indigenous people engaged in intermittent low-level warfare against a hostile occupying force, Castaldo’s choices—from history to the present day—could have created a great deal of controversy and excitement, though not out of line with the anti-colonial themes in operas from Nabucco to Carmen. Palestine, Iraq, or Tibet could have served just as favorably as ancient Gaul.

Of course, any of those locales would have forced Castaldo to solve the not insuperable problem of representing a woman in a position of power over men, as the opera’s main plot focuses on Norma (Christine Goerke) and Adalgisa (Kristine Jepson), a druid high priestess and novitiate of a Gallic tribe ruled by the Romans. Unbeknownst to one another, both fall in love with Pollione (Philip Webb), the local Roman governor who—before the opera begins— fathers children with Norma yet leaves her later for the younger and more innocent Adalgisa.

Opera lovers’ delight

Yet when he offers to take Adalgisa to Rome, where he promises her “a purer heaven and a better God,” I can’t help thinking of the controversy that Castaldo could have inflamed with a different setting. On the other hand, when I remember the dollar amounts lavished by the Opera Company on new stagings, and the consequent dominance of visual aspects in this season’s Rigoletto and Cyrano, I don’t regret Castaldo’s choices too much.

John Conklin’s fortress-like temple and picturesque backdrops of rugged mountains and thorny woods restrict the sets to the wings and background. And rightly so. With its abundant melodic structures, Norma offers a pure delight for opera lovers, and the intense choral numbers and score impart a power whose velocity propels the action forward like a shove in the back. At the Opera Company, for the first time this season, the voices and music dominate, and consequently from the early “Casta Diva”— sung rightly with the solemnity of a prayer— to the terrifying finale, this production soars musically.

Goerke upstaged

Webb displays a bold and thick tenor that befits his character and military bearing, and two Curtis students—Allison Sanders and Dominic Armstrong— provide the youthful aspect that’s missing from the three leads. Despite the haunting richness of color in her clean singing and apparently effortless handling of this difficult role, Christine Goerke nearly finds herself upstaged by Jepson’s marvelously beautiful voice (and the audience applause indicates that she did). And while they all play creatures betrayed by the pleasures of the flesh, vocally all three leads seem to supersede any physical limitations to scale the demanding heights of both the music and the Bel Canto style the singing requires.

However…. unlike the Opera Company’s Rigoletto and (especially) Cyrano, Norma provides very little dramatic impact. Partly, I blame the staging. When Adalgisa relates a story that mirrors Norma’s own betrayal of faith for love, she can’t possibly display any fellow feeling when the two women are standing nearly 40 feet apart. Boyd Ostroff often blankets Goerke in a blinding light that obscures her facial expressions. I understand that keeping them distant emphasizes the distance Norma feels, but a turned back would suffice.

The deep range of Goerke’s voice and her imposing stage presence help tremendously to overcome this deficiency—at the end of Act I, when she blocks Pollione and Adalgisa from leaving the stage, she makes it clear that she could rule over any tribe of barbarians. But in the subtler moments, there’s no chemistry among any of the three in this love triangle, and this story of love’s betrayal and spite’s revenge suffers in the telling.

Extremes of passion

Regardless of how well the performers embody their roles, Felice Romani’s libretto— reinforced by Bellini’s melodies— offers a potent study in how the extremes of passion severely distort the human psyche. Pollione blames everyone but himself when he claims that he’s “fated to betray her.” Adalgisa hopes for a quick respite despite her protests that she’d rather die; and Norma— like many rulers— uses a personal affront as a pretext to go to war. And of course, all three share their private ego-centered view of the universe when they sing in unison (no less) that “no God could conceive a sorrow greater than mine.”

No matter where it’s set, Romani has filled his libretto with Big Gestures, and in the terrifying ending, Norma’s only too glad for an excuse to become a martyr. “Now you will see the heart you betrayed and left,” she says, sacrificing herself to join the sentenced two-timer in death, to which he replies that he realizes only too late what a “sublime woman” he lost. Holding hands, they walk toward the burning pyre together.

Here, for better or worse, you have everything that makes opera operatic. The Bel Canto tradition in which Bellini wrote this opera—sung perfectly here—is everything that draws operaphiles to the opera in the first place.



To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.