It is a certain effect to go to the opera in wartime and to find yourself on the stage in a historical situation that is similar to today’s situation between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, Norma di Bellini, staged at the Regio di Torino until March 26 and with another production at the Regio di Parma from 18, shows the occupation of the Gauls by the Romans and the revolt of the Gauls against the invaders. It is also true that the long dormant motion of redemption is unleashed by the druidic priestess Norma for sentimental reasons against her betrayal to her detriment by the beloved Roman proconsul Pollione; nevertheless the plot and what is seen on stage have their bellicose moment. For the Turin show, which comes from San Carlo in Naples like other cases of emergency during the past commissioner with Rosanna Purchia and the general manager Guido Mulè, the Regio takes up the text that the set designer Ezio Frigerio had written on the theatrical program in economics. then, in another tragic moment: “Too easy to see current events in history, the Middle East ravaged by war, peoples on the run and all the miseries we are made aware of on a daily basis! In Bellini’s music the Kalashnikovs do not crackle and deafening planes do not fly across the sky. It tells of a war but it is not a war dripping with blood, it tells of a love that is the same as always “.
Yet Bellini also writes war choruses in the folds of bel canto, and on the other hand the history of melodrama is full of similar scenes, just think of Verdi’s Aida, which is a sentimental story in a political context. Today he is beginning to resort, albeit amid contrasts, to postcolonial studies to critically read works that deal with invading peoples and invaded peoples. The Neapolitan show now in Turin is instead the most neutral and traditional one can imagine, archaic and timeless, with the excessively static direction of Lorenzo Amato, in which the only flicker of full-stage digital fire seems to transform Norma’s pyre and Pollione in an autodafé for everyone. On the podium Francesco Lanzillotta attacks rather heavily, but in the following he softens the orchestra and the tempos, even with some flare too much in support of the singers. On this front excellent news: Gilda Fiume is a very bel canto Norma who in the cabaletta of the first act takes up the variations of Mariella Devia; Dmitry Korchak as Pollio has a bright timbre, although he sometimes loads the tenor part; Fabrizio Beggi is an authoritative bass like Oroveso and Annalisa Stroppa which Adalgisa dispenses a warm mezzo-soprano timbre. However, the desire for the opera to be done stably as Bellini would have written it does not seem utopian, that is, with a soprano also for Adalgisa and all the pages in the original tonalities.