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Norma At Leeds Grand Theatre
Annemarie Kremer as Norma, Luis Chapa as Pollione
EVEN the most seasoned opera buff wouldn’t draw an instant parallel between Margaret Thatcher and the high druid priestess, Norma.
But the fact that he looks at the world so differently is perhaps why Opera North consistently enlisted the talents of Christopher Alden.
“I just saw The Iron Lady movie” says the American director. “And there’s that scene where she’s watching Callas perform Norma – and I thought that was a rather interesting use of the piece, because they’re both powerful women and they both had difficulty balancing their public power with their private lives. And the fact that they used Casta Diva in that section of the film made it all the more apt.”
Ah yes, Casta Diva – one of opera’s greatest hits and a favourite on every compilation album released by every superstar soprano of the last 50 years. It is now ingrained in our subconsciousness thanks to its frequent appearance in everything from the aforementioned movie right up to Jean Paul Gaultier fragrance ads.
Yet the song, like the opera itself, has been taken out of context, reworked and, somehow, become something it was never intended to be – at least, that’s how Alden views it.
“I’ve tried to stress the human side of the story” he says. “And in doing that maybe I’ve removed some of the grandiose, hierarchic elements of the piece which can get in the way of an audience connecting with the story.
“This version is the opposite of the glamorous, sumptuous productions we’ve seen before. Because Norma is a very harrowing, intense ride for the audience, it really should be quite a difficult and dark thing to watch.”
Originally set in France around 50 BC, druid priestess Norma tries to lead a revolt against their Roman occupiers. Unfortunately she also leads something of a double life, hiding her two children that were a product of an affair with one of said Romans. But Alden wanted to strip back the story, and to that end shifted it into a rural community in the 19th century, with the empire represented by the encroaching influence of industrialisation. He believes it makes the narrative more relevant.
“At that time a lot of values of the past were being crushed underfoot.” says Alden. “And if you fast forward 150 years to now, it’s almost an Occupy Wall Street ethic – protesting that so many of the values of humanity and spirituality are being removed in a world more and more focused on an industrial vision. People are commodities in an urban marketplace.”
But with this newly contextualised production, which premiered last week at Leeds Grand Theatre and continues on Saturday, Alden is working against the history behind Norma.
Not only is this one of Bellini’s most celebrated works, it has been performed by a pantheon of great leading ladies – Caballe, Callas, Sutherland – and is regarded as being among that band of classics which defines the essence of opera.
Not that Alden pays much credence to the classic mode of thinking. During the last decade his relationship with Opera North’s audiences got off to a good start with the risque, but generally well received, Eight Little Greats season back in 2004, but three years later his avant garde interpretation of Monteverdi’s Orfeo garnered audible boos at the premiere. He only redeemed himself with his last collaboration, a triumphant Tosca.
“Of the two operas, I think Tosca was obviously the more successful.” he says “Yet, strangely, it doesn’t get more controversial, potentially, than Tosca. But, as often as you’d like to, you can’t really argue with an audience’s reaction. I just think it was harder to grasp what I was going for with Orfeo. “I think it’s to do with audience expectation: they expected something more lovely and pastoral, not something brutal and dark. So Orfeo just left them more puzzled than disturbed. This is kind of half way between Orfeo and Tosca.”
Tape
This is particularly intriguing since Orfeo saw Alden liberally employ masking tape as a vehicle for the narrative. In one scene the central character, Orfeo, sees his love taken into hell – a move which is indicated by her being fixed to the back wall of the stage using hundreds of feet of said tape, cut into dozens of sections. Which didn’t go down to well as the sound of the tape stretching off the rolls was often louder than Monteverdi’s score.
But initial signs are that Alden hasn’t gone too far with this production, not too much rebellion against the traditional elements, in fact he seems deeply respectful to the piece and, in particular, to his leading lady, Annemarie Kremer.
“There is some intimidation in coming up against such an iconic work, one that people have such strong association with.” says Alden. “But as soon as I get into the rehearsal room you get caught up in the character and the situations and you forget about any of that. And everyone involved brings all these qualities to the piece.
“Particularly Annemarie, what she brings is very complete and personal. And it has to be because whoever sings the part has to have the stuff to get through that role. It’s an amazingly endless part which just seems to goes on and on. Miraculously, we’ve found a brilliant woman to tackle this and she can really go the distance with it. Seriously, performing Norma is like watching a great athlete in a decathlon.”
So the director seems to be making a confident start, though it will take more than one performance to gauge the reaction of audiences and critics alike. But Alden is braced for a varied response.
“As absurd as it sounds,” he says “the one thing I’ve learned is that there really is nothing more politically divisive than opera.”
*Saturday,Thursday and February 15 and 17, Leeds Grand Theatre, New Briggate, Leeds, 7.30pm, £8 to £65, Tel. 0844 8482700 www.operanorth.co.uk/productions/norma
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