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“I can punish him, but my heart can’t”
Torn between her duty as high priestess of the Gallic Empire and her feelings for the Roman consul Pollione, whose two sons she secretly had, Norma discovers with fear that the latter only has eyes for the young Adalgisa. She thinks about revenge: will she have to kill Pollione’s sons, or kill him himself? Shared by remorse, Norma will sacrifice herself by going to up the stake in great humility, followed by Pollione, conscious of his actions.
“Norma is Bellini’s only opera that combines sincerity and ardour with the deepest melodic richness. It was in these terms that the young Richard Wagner showed his admiration for Bellini’s opera, which he conducted in 1837 in Riga.” These praises are easily understood by the dramatic force that is revealed both in the majestic clarity of the recitatives and in the melodic power of the bel canto, here in the service of tragedy, and which culminates in Casta Diva, the aria that has made Norma a veritable myth in the operatic repertoire.
Lyrical tragedy in 2 acts
Libretto by Felice Romani
First performed on December 26, 1831 at La Scala in Milan.
Alkor – Kassel Publishers, Rev. Maurizio Biondi and Riccardo Minasi
New production by the Opéra de Lausanne
Diego Fasolis began his career as a concert organist before turning to conducting. A regular guest at the Salzburg Festival, he conducts Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Musikverein with the Vienna Concentus Musicus and the Arnold Schönberg Choir. La Scala entrusts him with the creation of an orchestra playing on period instruments, which he then conducts in Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. In Milan, he also conducted Tamerlano with Plácido Domingo. With over 120 CDs released by major international labels such as EMI-Virgin, Naïve, Universal Music and Warner Classics, Diego Fasolis has received numerous awards for his commitment to rediscovering the operatic repertoire: the Disco d’Oro, the Grand Prix du Disque for his work on Handel and Vivaldi, and the Echo Klassik for Leonardo Vinci’s opera Artaserse. In 2014 and 2015, he was nominated for two Grammy Awards for the triumphant “Mission” project with works by Agostino Steffani and the “Saint Petersburg” project with Cecilia Bartoli. To mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s death, he recorded Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony with I Barocchisti in Lugano for Arte. In 2019, Diego Fasolis was named Conductor of the Year at the International Opera Awards. Recent and future engagements include Bach’s St. John Passion in Stuttgart, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena in Lugano, Reggio Emilia, Modena and Piacenza, and Vivaldi’s Tamerlano at La Fenice.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Faramondo (2009), Rinaldo (2011), Farnace (2011), L’Artaserse (2012), Dorilla in Tempe (2014), Die Zauberflöte (2015), Ariodante (2016), La clemenza di Tito (2018), Orphée et Eurydice (2019), Meyerbeer’s Gli amori di Teolinda (2019), Alcina (2022), I Barocchisti (Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno) (2023) and Norma (2023)
In search of a rigorous aesthetic and conceptual unity for a theater founded on all the arts, Stefano Poda has always developed his own language by combining the functions of director, set and costume designer, lighting designer, as well as choreographer. In 2019, he received the Claude Rostand Prize for his production of Ariane et Barbe-Bleue by Dukas at the Capitole de Toulouse. He has directed more than 100 productions worldwide, including: Rusalka (2022) at the Toulouse National Opera; the new production of Tosca (2021) at the Bolshoi in Moscow; Nabucco for the opening of the National Theatre of Korea in 2021 and at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires (2020/22); Romeo and Juliet (2018) at the National Center for Performing Arts in Beijing; Boris Godunov (2017) and Andrea Chénier (2015) at the Korean National Opera; Antônio Carlos Gomes’ Fosca and Mahler’s Titan at the São Paulo Municipal Theater (2016); L’elisir d’amore in Strasbourg (2016); Otello in Budapest (2015); Tristan und Isolde at the opening of the 77th Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. His Faust (2015), Turandot (2018) and Thaïs at the Teatro Regio in Turin, have been shown in cinemas around the world. Recent projects include: the opening of the Verona Arena Centennial Festival in the summer of 2023 with the new production of Verdi’s Aida, broadcast worldwide; the opening of the Rossini Festival in Pesaro 2023 with the first modern performance in the critical edition of Eduardo e Cristina; the launch of the 2023/24 season of the Teatro Regio in Turin with Halévy’s La Juive; Enesco’s Oedipus at the 2023 Enesco Festival in Bucharest.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Ariodante and Faust (2016), Lucia de Lammermoor (2017), Les Contes d’Hoffmann (2019), Alcina (2022) and Norma (2023).
Born in Palermo, Paolo Fanale made his debut as Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni) in Padua. Since then, he has performed on the most important opera stages such as La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, the Opéra national de Paris, the Berlin Staatsoper, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Salzburg Festival and the Dallas Opera. He sang the title roles in Faust and La clemenza di Tito, as well as Fenton (Falstaff), Hylas (Les Troyens), Romeo (Romeo and Juliet), Nemorino (L’elisir d’amore), Tamino (Die Zauberflöte), Pelléas (Pelléas et Mélisande), Ferrando (Così fan tutte), Belmonte (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Tebaldo (I Capuleti e i Montecchi), Rinuccio (Gianni Schicchi), Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor), Gennaro (Lucrezia Borgia), Grimoaldo (Rodelinda), Nicias (Thaïs), Lenski (Eugene Onegin), Rodolfo (La bohème), Il Duca di Mantova (Rigoletto), and Nadir (Les Pêcheurs de perles). He has worked under the direction of James Levine, Claudio Abbado, Kurt Masur, Zubin Metha, Daniele Gatti and Jordi Savall.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Faust (2016) and La clemenza di Tito (2018).
Born in Georgia in 1986, Salome Jicia initially dedicated herself to the piano, before branching out into singing, which she studied in her native country and then at the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome. Winner of numerous prizes, she can be seen in productions all over Europe: she is Aspasia (Mitridate re di Ponto) in Tbilissi and Budapest, Rosina (La finta semplice) in an AsLiCo production in Como, Cremona and Pavia, the Contessa di Foleville (Il viaggio a Reims) in Pesaro, where she also appears in La donna del lago; she appeared in Semiramide at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, as part of Alejandro Granda’s opera festival in Lima, Peru, and in Koutaïssi, Georgia, where she shared the stage with José Carreras. Future projects include Don Giovanni in Liège and Così fan tutte at Covent Garden. She will shortly be taking part in productions of Guillaume Tell in Munich, Maria Stuarda in Zurich and Otello in Liège.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: La clemenza di Tito (2018).
Lucia Cirillo began her career by winning several competitions such as ASLICO and the prestigious Toti dal Monte International Competition. Her rich and unique voice has taken her to the most important theaters, festivals and concert halls in Europe: Salzburg Festival, La Scala in Milan, Paris Opera, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Deutsche Oper in Berlin, Chopin Festival in Warsaw, Glyndebourne Festival, Mozart Festival in A Coruña, La Fenice in Venice, Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Teatro Regio in Turin, Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Teatro Real in Madrid, Vlaamse Oper in Antwerp. .. She has worked with world-renowned conductors such as Fabio Biondi, Sylvain Cambreling, Ottavio Dantone, Diego Fasolis, Daniele Gatti, Vladimir Jurowski, Alexander Lazarev, and directors such as Robert Carsen, Fabio Ceresa, Gilbert Deflo, Sir Peter Hall, Davide Livermore and Pier Luigi Pizzi. She has recorded important audio and video projects for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Opus Arte and Naïve (The Vivaldi Edition). With Diego Fasolis, she has performed the roles of Alcina (Orlando furioso), Elmiro (Dorilla in Tempe), Caio (Ottone in villa) and Berenice (Farnace) by Vivaldi.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Dorilla in Tempe (2014), Don Giovanni (2017) and Le nozze di Figaro (2021).
The Opéra de Lausanne Choir is young, made up of students of singing from Lausanne’s University of Music and the Geneva HEM, and professional singers. Its members are selected by audition and periodically reheard. For each opera, they are distributed depending on their voice and/or aptitudes. Thanks mainly to their talent on stage, supported by an infectious enthusiasm, they are highly appreciated by all the theatre directors invited. For a few years the choir has benefitted from preparation by several experienced choir masters from different backgrounds, chosen depending on the works being sung and their specific interest.
rained at the Conservatoire d’Aix-en-Provence, where he began his career under the baton of Darius Milhaud, Patrick Marie Aubert obtained a first prize in orchestral conducting in the class of Pierre Villette. He also won a prize for singing, a prize for lyric art and a prize for chamber music. He was a professor of the choral singing class and then director of the Léo Delibes Conservatory in Clichy, artistic director of the Vox Hominis vocal ensemble, musical director of the Divertimento orchestra and conductor of the choirs of the Nantes Opera. Conductor of the French Army Choir until 2000, he has participated for nearly twenty years in major national events and has conducted numerous concerts in France and abroad. He was the conductor of the Chœur du Capitole de Toulouse from 2003 to 2009, then director of the Chœur de l’Opéra national de Paris from 2009 to 2014. He has collaborated with conductors Maurizio Arena, Serge Baudo, Roberto Benzi, Marc Minkowski, Evelino Pidò, Michel Plasson, Georges Prêtre, Yutaka Sado, Jeffrey Tate… and directors Robert Carsen, Georges Lavaudant, Jorge Lavelli, Laurent Pelly, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Olivier Py, Robert Wilson…
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Orpheus and Eurydice (2019), The Tales of Hoffmann (2019), the exceptional concert of the Opera de Lausanne Choir (2020), Little Red Riding Hood (2021), Candide (2022), Le domino noir (2023)
Born in Turin, Paolo Giani Cei has been assisting Stefano Poda all over the world since 2008 in the areas of staging, sets, costumes and lighting, basing his work on a theater that merges all the arts. He worked on the production of Tristan und Isolde conducted by Zubin Mehta for the opening of the 77th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, as well as – as a dramaturge – on Titan, a choreographic show based on Mahler’s First Symphony presented by the National Dance Company of São Paulo, and Fosca by Antônio Carlos Gomes at the Municipal Theater of São Paulo. In recent years, he has directed Madama Butterfly, La traviata, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La bohème, Cenerentola and Don Giovanni at the Teatro Verdi in Padua, La Voix humaine at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and in 2021, Die lustige Wittwe at the Teatro Mario del Monaco in Treviso. As an assistant, he is working on Tosca at the Bolshoi in 2021, Nabucco at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 2020/22, Ariadne and Bluebeard at the Capitole in Toulouse in 2019, Turandot and Faust at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 2018 and 2015, Otello at the National Opera in Budapest in 2015, Boris Godunov and Andrea Chénier at the National Opera in Korea in 2017 and 2015, and La forza del destino at the Parma Verdi Festival in 2014.