Foto: Teatro Carlo Felice, Genova
Suzanne Daumann
These
days, stage directors and conductors are taking quite a few liberties with the
works they interpret: a pity that nobody has yet found it necessary to rid
Bellini’s Norma of a few of its many lengthy passages at least. It might be impossible anyway to
reshape its dramaturgy to a more continuous kind of suspense. Howsoever that
might be, tonight’s performance left us with rather mixed feelings. Luigi
di Gangi and Ugo Giocomazzi’s staging simply situated the action in some kind
of no man’s land between history and dream, underlined by Daniela Cernigliaro’s
costumes. She put the Gauls into historical clothes, long robes for priestesses
and priests, breeches and tunics for the warriors, whereas the Romans wore
black modern uniforms. Federica Parolini’s scenography was interesting to look
at: dead trees joined together by a thick red thread and strips of brown fabric
hanging from wooden frames were the forest, a round frame with white strips of
cloth was the moon. At least we could speculate about the meaning of all this
symbolic stuff. Luigi Biondi’s lovely lighting gave colors to the backgrounds
and lit these frames in various ways, highlighting the scenes’ contents; the
lighting was one of the two real highlights of the evening. Mixed
feelings prevailed as to our reaction to the singers: Desirée Rancatore’s Norma
was lovely to hear, but she was lacking vocal stamina, strength, depths of
emotion and conviction, and thus, was not very convincing. Even less
convincing, Roberto Iuliano’s Pollione. The other highlight of the show was
Valentina Boi as Adalgisa. She had it all, a lyrical voice, rounded and warm,
juvenile candor, and quite easily stole the scene. The voices blended well in
the ensembles and the choir was remarkable. Mixed
feelings on the whole; the public, however, was delighted, cheers and applause
were plentiful, and all is well that ends well
