Norma: Druids on Parade

I did it!  I finally saw Jamie Barton live!  For any unaware, La Barton is a rising star of opera from Armuchee, a tiny town in Ga which is pronounced with more r's than it is spelled.  I think I played French horn at a concert in the Armuchee Baptist church while I was in undergrad near that small town.  La Barton graduated with her bachelor's in the college across town from the college where I got my bachelor's.  After her school was taken over by the Southern Baptist Convention and started asking faculty to sign "lifestyle" statements which, amongst other things, condemning all people having sex in non-baptist approved away.  Jamie Barton responded to this by ordering the college to never use her name in their publicity materials (she is their most fabulous alum, so that is a problem for them) and writing a letter to the local small newspaper criticizing their actions.  In small town rural Georgia, standing up against powerful Christian organizations is not an easy thing to do.

For all this, I was completely prepared to love her in Norma no matter what, but no personal bias was needed. Jamie Barton sang hell and guts out of Adalgisa and outshone everyone else on stage, including her costar Angela Meade.  Which is not to say they didn't do a great and wonderful job together.

This was my first Bellini opera and I can state categorically that my life needs more Bellini.  That being said, the LA opera did not stage this with sufficiently pageantry.  There was one single set, a steeply raked stage which I hope is the reason for the tenors shoes having heels that significantly differed from one another in height. The only affect was a moon that rose slowly across the backdrop and turned red at the end.  This is an opera about druids under Roman rule, illicit liaisons between Gaul and Roman, self-immolation, hidden children, and Druid rites.  Just the Druid rites and self-immolation need something in the way of pageantry.  Otherwise we have nothing to focus on but the emotional angst and the plot.  While the singers brought the emotional angst, the plot makes even less sense than normal in opera.  Two things really stick out as strange.  First of all, that a public and publicly virginal priestess/princess figure could have not one, but two children without anyone finding out.  Second, that the Druids are living under a cruel Roman rule.  This is asserted without example, while the Druids are threatening unbelievers with death in chorus and having human sacrifices.  What exactly are the Romans doing that is worse here?  I know they prohibited the Druid religion, but again, human sacrifice.  As far as Imperialistic suppression of native cultures go, I'm not finding that one so very terrible. 

Jamie Barton is a wonderful young Adalgisa, all full of love for some Roman and admiration for her Druid priestess superior. Even despite the less than stellar acoustics of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in LA she shone.  She gets a little heavy in spots, but overall, she has a lovely voice and a stage presence that draws attention.  Even while Angela Meade is bringing the angst to her Norma, Jamie Barton makes her look a little hamfisted in her interpretation.   Meade does not make me believe in Norma's motivations.  I'll admit, it's not a particularly believable role, and she is trying, and no one is Callas onstage, but I wanted a little more from her. I also wanted so much more from the Druid chorus.  The dancers that accompanied Norma everywhere were nice and flowy, and always present to hand Norma a gong or a knife were a good touch, but they weren't, in themselves, sufficient pomp.  Pollione, at least, was believable as a villain.  

So overall, it could have been staged with so much more spectacle than it was.  But overall, it was delightful.  The singers made a plain production into an engaging spectacle.