FULL NORMA Messina 2023 Klára Kolonits, Stefano Secco, Alessia Nadin, Gabriele Sagona

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Norma  
• Composer: Bellini Vincenzo  
• Libretto: Felice Romani    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Teatro Vittorio Emanuele di Messina, Italy  
• Recorded: September 29, 2023
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Klára Kolonits, Stefano Secco, Alessia Nadin, Gabriele Sagona, Oleksandra Chaikovska, Davide Scigliano
• Conductor: Giuseppe Ratti  
• Orchestra: Orchestra dell’E.A.R. Teatro di Messina  
• Chorus: Coro Lirico Francesco Cilea  
• Chorus Master: Bruno Tirotta  
• Stage Director: Francesco Torrigiani  
• Stage Designer: Francesca Cannavò  
• Costume Designer: Lisa Rufini  
• Lighting Designer: Gianni Pollini  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Bellini International Context  
• Date Published: 2023  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  
• Video Recording from: YouTube     FULL VIDEO
•  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

When the direction for this new Norma was proposed to us by the Teatro
Vittorio Emanuele, which finally fulfilled our mutual desire to
work together again, I immediately concentrated not only on “how”
to stage Bellini’s masterpiece, but first and foremost on ” why” do it. Being
in the personal condition of not having to stage an opera at all costs
puts you in the privileged position of selecting the occasions in which to do so,
depending on the reasons and profound motivations that drive
your decisions. And the reason in this case is easy to identify: the ancient
relationship that binds me to the Messina public, with whom over the years I have spent
thanks to Vittorio Emanuele my best theatrical experiences (in the names of Mozart,
Rossini, Donizetti, …) were the intimate driving force behind the decision to accept this
assignment.
The idea of ​​the installation therefore arises from the human and artistic relationship with the
men and women of the client theatre, understood both as an institution, as
theater workers, and as the public. Hence the desire to apply the ideas that
have always linked me to the score of Norma to the occasion in which we went on
stage: the festival dedicated expressly to Vincenzo Bellini. Sicily
thus became the protagonist of my interpretative imagination until it ended up at the center of
narrative itself: the clash between the “barbarian”, primitive world of Norma’s Gauls and
the historical “civilization”, the progressive West, of Pollione was becoming increasingly linked
to the land, to the places, of the author.
From a reading inspired by Pasolini’s Medea as well as by
Burri’s “telluric” works, the story unfolded – in the minds and in discussions with Francesca
Cannavò, Lisa Rufini and Gianni Pollini – as a clash between primitive instinct and
the violence of civilization, starting from the soul of the protagonist and with a
particular focus on the tragic suffering of the female soul in contrast with
the male element (element of betrayal, escape and absence). The narrative is
carried out – in the conception phase of the show – in a highly
symbolic environment, which evoked the land of writing, the same in this case the land of
representation and therefore of narration: the Sicily of Bellini, the Sicily of Vittorio
Emanuele, the Sicily of the stage : in the name of «a muntagna» and of the
natural and artistic declinations of the life of the land that hosts the show. The land of the
druids, their sacred forest, their moon and their purifying pyres will therefore be
seen through the lens of a lava environment capable of alluding, with affection and
gratitude, to the distinctive signs of the land that is the protagonist of the representation.
The use of a highly symbolic language then allows, as per
always in my theater, the ascension to a higher, freer narrative level, in
which the dramaturgy attempts to interpret the deepest musical soul of the
score, even surpassing from a terminological point of view the concept of
“shifting of setting” , of “updating” the story and of all those
theatrical concepts which – pursuing for years a “new realism” of
contemporary theater – have already shown their obsolescence
and ephemerality in a short time. It is time to rediscover, in restoring the symbolic value of
scenic narration as a tool for liberating the
spectator’s interpretative activity, a theater that dialogues with contemporaneity, without being dominated
of current events. With the modesty due to the writer, this direction however seeks to
be a clear voice for the rebirth of a different way of making theatre.

Francesco Torrigiani