NORMA | VINCENZO BELLINI
Francesco Lanzillotta: Conductor | Vasily Barkhatov: Director | Asmik Grigorian (Norma) |
Aigul Akhmetshina (Adalgisa) | Freddie De Tommaso (Pollione)
Theater an der Wien | Premiere: February 16, 2025
Streamed by ARTE TV (performance from February 23) | Available on demand until Thursday, April 24, 2025.
Free to watch, here. (This ARTE stream may be geo-blocked in some regions.)
These days, those in Vienna have the rare opportunity to see two new productions of Norma, staged by the city’s leading opera houses: the Wiener Staatsoper and the MusikTheater an der Wien.
ARTE TV is streaming one of them—the MusikTheater an der Wien production—featuring two of today’s most celebrated singers: Asmik Grigorian as Norma and Aigul Akhmetshina as Adalgisa.
Vasily Barkhatov, who last staged Weinberg’s The Idiot at the MusikTheater an der Wien, brings a psychologically razor-sharp analysis of the characters, visualised in striking imagery. In his interpretation, Norma undergoes a whirlwind of emotions, torn between love, anger, and despair.
The musical direction is in the hands of Francesco Lanzillotta.
OVERVIEW
Norma is a woman caught between two systems. On one hand, as a Gallic priestess in an occupied land, she holds the power to decide over war and peace. On the other, she is the secret lover of the Roman general Pollione, with whom she has two children. Her double life threatens to unravel when Pollione chooses to leave her for the younger priestess Adalgisa. The unbearable conflict between love and revenge, emotion and reason, nearly drives Norma to kill her own children—until she ultimately chooses a different, though equally radical, path.
Composed in 1831, Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma is his most famous opera and one of the masterpieces of Italian Romanticism, featuring the legendary aria Casta Diva.
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