The celebrated opera, however, offers much more than just beautiful singing. Richard Wagner, who loved Norma, emphasised that its extraordinarily dramatic music perfectly describes the "image of the soul" of the main character, who is torn between love for an enemy of her country, duty to her people, and a desire for revenge.
The libretto for Norma, the eighth opera by the Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835), was written by Felice Romani, based on the French author Alexandre Soumet’s play. The story takes place during the Roman occupation of Gaul, with the main plot revolving around the secret marriage of the Druid priestess Norma to the Roman proconsul Pollione. The phenomenal soprano Giuditta Pasta was largely responsible for the huge success of the premiere at La Scala, on 26 December 1831, even though she had initially rejected the title role due to its extreme difficulty. Norma’s ambivalence and highly complicated nature, buffeted by uncontrollable alternating fits of love and hatred, pride and humility, tolerance and vindictiveness, is forcibly depicted in the pivotal aria “Casta diva”, as well as in the splendid duos and trios with Pollione and her rival, the priestess Adalgisa. The vocal challenges placed on the singer performing Norma are enormous, yet the coloraturas are not a vehicle for gratuitous of technical brilliance but incorporated into the melody as expressively exuberant melismas, serving to convey the extreme positions of the heroine’s emotional spectrum.
Norma was first performed in Prague in 1835, at the Estates Theatre, in Italian. The most recent Prague adaptation, premiered in October 2015, was conducted by Italy’s Enrico Dovico and staged by the Japanese director Tomo Sugao, with the scenery created by the renowned Slovak designer Boris Kudlička. The State Opera toured Japan with the production, starring Edita Gruberová, who also portrayed the heroine in Prague at the final three performances, in May and June 2018. This November’s concert performance of Norma will be conducted by the State Opera's music director, Hermann Bäumer, and the title role will be sung by the Kosovar soprano Marigona Qerkezi, who has gained acclaim at major opera houses, including the Oper Frankfurt, where she will debut as Norma in April 2025.
