The summer solstice is that discordant jolt when just as the
warmth arrives daylight begins to shorten.
For opera buffs looking ahead to the next season it’s also a time to
take one last look in the rear view mirror.
Patrons of the Lyric Opera are in the middle of a Bellini double-header
treat – last season’s Norma, a
highlight, and next season’s I Puritani. Can’t gainsay that.
Composer Vincenzo Bellini is the pride of Sicily. After his all-too-short life of 33 years, he
was buried in the cathedral of his home town Catania, in the shadow of Mt.
Aetna looking out on the Ionian Sea. I regrettably
missed visiting that church during my one time on the great island – I only
came as close as the nearby airport. Bellini
wrote some wonderful melodies, and one can only wonder what more he would have
written had he not died so young.
Norma is the story
of a druid high-priestess in Roman-occupied Gaul who faces a reckoning after
her longstanding illicit, secret lover, the Roman military leader and enemy of
her people with whom she has two young children, decides to decamp for Rome with
a younger priestess, his new infatuation.
She had betrayed her religion and her people for him, and faces the
consequences, moral and otherwise. Eventually
the Roman sees the error of his ways, but, since this is Italian tragic opera,
after all, too late to save either of them.
The music is spectacular, with the long-flowing melodies for
which Bellini is famous. The singing for
the role of Norma, said to be very challenging, I find smooth and full of
harmony with little of the unappealing (at least to me) vocal calisthenics common
in opera at the time. Maria Callas gets
much credit for reviving so-called bel canto opera in the 1950s, and in fact
she made her American debut singing Norma in Chicago at the Lyric in its inaugural
1954 season. In the program guide, Lyric
“dramaturg” Roger Pines quotes the late superstar soprano Joan Sutherland calling
Norma “the pinnacle role,” and he writes that “there is no greater music for a
soprano in the entire operatic repertoire.”
This time around Norma was performed and sung beautifully by
Chicago native soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, who appeared recently at the
Met in the three Donizetti “queen” operas.
At the Lyric she was joined by, among others, Elizabeth DeShong as
Adalgisa, her conflicted rival in love, and by Russell Thomas as the unfaithful
Roman proconsul Pollione. Radvanovsky’s repertory
includes Verdi’s I vespri siciliani;
Lyric patrons can only hope.
As for the production, the sets and direction frequently let
the audience down, unfortunately a not uncommon problem in opera these
days. Part of opera is visual, so a good
set that can help convey the story and stimulate the imagination greatly
enhances the experience, while one that is bland, or anachronistic, or confuses the narrative detracts.
The entire Norma set was a
single scene, visually interesting in the abstract, but not one representative
of Roman Gaul. I doubt there would be a
structure with 60 foot high thick, decorative wooden columns supporting a large
indoor space in rural, sylvan Gaul. And
the entire opera was staged in this drab-gray "space," despite some
of the scenes taking place in the forest or in a hidden hut deep in the woods. Well, in the program guide the director says
he was visually inspired by … wait for it … Game
of Thrones, so that explains that. That’s
relevance, the holy grail of many a hip
post-modern director. But this was a multi-partner
co-production, so there’s lot of responsibility spread around. I appreciate and value imagination, but
within the confines of the narrative.
Some years ago when back in Chicago, Radvanovsky would stop
by for delightful chats about opera with the incomparable Milt Rosenberg on his
storied late-evening radio show Extension 720; I caught at least one of those programs,
and more if memory serves. I miss that
show very much, but that’s another story.
R Balsamo
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