FULL NORMA Palermo 2023 Marina Rebeka, Dmitry Korchak, Maria Barakova

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Norma   
• Composer: Bellini Vincenzo  
• Libretto: Felice Romani    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Italy  
• Recorded: April 16, 2023
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Marina Rebeka, Dmitry Korchak, Maria Barakova, Riccardo Fassi, Massimiliano Chiarolla, Elisabetta Zizzo Maestro del Coro Salvatore Punturo
• Conductor: Lorenzo Passerini  
• Orchestra: Orchestra del Teatro Massimo  
• Chorus: Coro del Teatro Massimo  
• Chorus Master: Salvatore Punturo  
• Stage Director: Ugo Giacomazzi, Luigi Di Gangi  
• Stage Designer: Federica Parolini  
• Costume Designer: Daniela Cernigliaro  
• Lighting Designer: Luigi Biondi  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Teatro Massimo  
• Date Published: 2023  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: yessubs, itsubs  
• Video Recording from: YouTube     FULL VIDEO
•  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

“Our Norma – say the directors  Luigi Di Gangi  and  Ugo Giacomazzi  –  is ancestral, ritual, archaic, made up of women who weave and threads that unravel like those of the Fates, of prophecies to the moon. A Norma inspired by the profound Sardinia of  Maria Lai , the artist who died a few years ago… There is a sentence by Maria Lai that says: “there are people who are born with the sensation of not belonging to the laws of this world, and this what makes them suffer because they feel excluded, until they understand that this actually sets them free, and there lies their strength, and there they express themselves and become themselves. A sentence in which we fully recognize ourselves and which also seems to have been written for  Norma, a woman who has the sensation of living her life amplified, as if she came from elsewhere. Forced to the laws of this world, she found herself trapped in her own nets but in the end she realizes that she has performed a true act of freedom: having fathered children and given them a future in a renewed, mixed, “impure” society without borders and without walls”.

A lyrical tragedy in two acts, with a libretto by Felice Romani,  Norma  has always been recognized as  Vincenzo Bellini ‘s masterpiece . Performed for the first time at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1831, it is based on the contemporary tragedy  Norma ou l’infanticide  by Alexandre Soumet which was staged with great success on the Parisian stages in those years. A story of love and death, against the background of the war between the Gauls and the Romans, which refers to the classical tradition of  Euripides’ Medea  and to infanticide as revenge for the betrayal of love. Norma  is the priestess of the temple of Irminsul who, in Gaul of the druids during the Roman domination, secretly breaks her vows by loving Pollio , proconsul of Rome and father of her two children. But  Pollione  falls in love with the young novice  Adalgisa  unaware of the relationship between him and  Norma . Publicly accusing herself of having broken her vows,  Norma, grieving and betrayed, does not hesitate to sacrifice her life in place of that of her rival in love, in an ending that brings her closer to  Pollione  and which celebrates the eternal love of lovers in the death.

Norma  had  great performers at the  Teatro Massimo in Palermo  , including: Ester Mazzoleni in 1920, Gina Cigna in 1931, the sublime Maria Callas in 1951, Anita Cerquetti in 1958 and recently, in 2017, Mariella Devia.