The Stage

Norma

Published Monday 30 January 2012 at 10:37 by George Hall

Director Christopher Alden continues his fruitful association with Opera North in this new staging of Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece.

Old-fashioned productions of the opera, set in Ancient Gaul, where the local Druids simmer with hatred of the Roman occupying forces, can look ridiculous - the Gallic tribes with impossibly hirsute men and women in sacks. Instead, Alden updates. Sue Willmington’s costumes have a mid-19th century feel. The programme contains photos of the Amish community. The Romans, meanwhile, don the top hats and black suits of wealthy mill-owners.

Charles Edward’s solid unit set is a vast wooden barn, with a gigantic tree trunk scored with pagan symbols occupying much of the floor space and rising, imposingly if alarmingly, to the roof. The specifics of the situation are unclear, but the look of the show is impressive.

So is its dramatic thrust, even if - as often happens with Alden - some of the more extreme gestures go a little too far off the path of fidelity to the libretto to convince. Yet one is regularly bowled over by the power of a realisation as committed and charged with emotion as this.

In her UK debut, Dutch soprano Annemarie Kremer burns with authentic fire as the priestess touched by the divine who sells her people and religion short through her illicit relationship with the Roman proconsul, Pollione. In the person of Mexican tenor Luis Chapa, he’s an unsubtle though sometimes potent presence. Keri Alkema matches Kremer note for note and gesture for gesture, while James Creswell is an empowered Oroveso. Oliver von Dohnanyi conducts a consistently exciting interpretation.