Bellini: Norma

Great recordings of Bellini’s 1831 opera Norma have been made by sopranos such as Maria Callas, Montserrat Caballé and Joan Sutherland. The Italian Cecilia Bartoli broke the mould, however, when she made her own recording in 2013. As a mezzo-soprano, her voice is riper in its middle range, imparting a thrilling authority to the opera’s recitative “Sediziose voci”. Bartoli’s pinpoint accuracy in strings of short notes also freshens the incantatory aria “Casta Diva”, and both she and tenor John Osborn (as her lover Pollione) are acutely responsive to textual nuance in their doomed duet “Qual cor tradisti, qual por perdesti”. But perhaps the biggest innovation in this performance is the orchestra’s use of instruments from Bellini’s own period. Under conductor Giovanni Antonini they can sound both thrillingly visceral and startlingly intimate, making a rawer impact than the smoother-textured modern orchestra. They add an extra layer of revelation to this groundbreaking interpretation.