Norma emotions at the Teatru Astra

Once again - and yet not so much “again” - the Teatru Astra has presented the opera loving public of the Maltese islands with an evening of astonishing spectacle, superlative creativity and captivating emotion.
 
Norma, Vincenzo Bellini’s great two-act opera, does not offer itself to spectacle in much straightforwardness, although tempestuous human sentiment is what it is all about. It is the romantic tale of the illicit love of a Druid priestess for the Roman invader of her country, a love that goes up in flames against a backdrop of priests and priestesses, Roman soldiers and Gallic warriors. But there is no stage spectacle that guarantees, on its own, visual interest. Nevertheless, in Norma, there is such drama! It is drama that Bellini has expressed in stunning,lyrical and at the same time tortuous music.

Indeed, what music! Soloists, chorus and orchestra brought such pleasure to the audience that packed the theatre! An almost carnal pleasure which was, in a mysterious way, deeply spiritual and uplifting.
 
Norma, the title character in particular, but not less Pollione and her rival Adalgisa, as well as the other soloists and the chorus regaled us with emotions that ranged from the haughty to the desperately passionate, from the idyllic to the darkest that agonizing love can generate.  
 
On Saturday night, which was the one I attended, the Teatru Astra opera stage set in motion a concerto of emotions, a trail of experience embodying feelings and sentiments that go beyond what the mind is theoretically geared to capture and rationally grasp.  Because on that night, the stage gave up a myriad of oscillating images and captivating choreography, one wave upon another of poignant duets and rousing scenarios, a succession of splendid scenery that combed innovative technology into traditional settings, as well as a marathon of bel canto that pooled enchanting vocal finesse with the dramatic rigor for which Norma reigns supreme in the world of opera.
 
At the Teatru Astra, enormously impressive was, indeed, everything, and not less the large number of young people performing on the opera stage or collaborating backstage. This was – is – absolutely wonderful.  The management of the theatre must be gratified that with the opera Norma, as with other productions before it, it has not only served the mostly mature opera enthusiasts of these islands but it is also fostering the next generation of opera lovers.  People like our secondary school sons and daughters, or university student nephews and nieces, or 25 to 35 year-old youth whose attachment to opera would otherwise be simply dependence on fluctuating parades of hit pop and rock. Though there is, of course, no basic wrong in that.
 
Emotion in all its shades, which distinguishes human beings from the rest of living creation and raises them above it, is a sure pull on youth as it is on the rest of us. It happens to us but it is also what we make of special experiences that also happen to us.
 
This being so, I can only say that the exquisite feeling, the enchanting emotion that Norma has left in me would be to walk once again to the Teatru Astra for to its next performance. 
 
Which, alas, cannot be. The management did not provide for a third night. It is not a dig but, what a pity!

Joseph Farrugia  (Photos: Joe Attard)

2 November 2011