Norma - BLU-RAY

Hasmik Paplan, Hugh Smith, Irini Tsirakidis, Giorgio Giuseppini, Anna Steiger, and Carlo Bosi star in de Nederlandse Opera's production of the Bellini opera with Julian Reynolds conducting.

This is not simply a recording of Norma as staged in January 2018 at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. It's real value is that it is the superb conclusion to the career of Mariella Devia, one of the finest Belcanto singers of our time, which makes the present recording an ideal artistic testament that pinpoints Mariella Devia's total eminence at the end of a long, hard-won career. That career began officially 45 years earlier as Lucia di Lammermoor at the Toti Dal Monte Competition in Treviso in 1973- a role in which Devia would become the standard by which others would by judged. At the beginning of her career, Devia had to emigrate to the USA. Thrown in at the deep end, Mariella Devia's professionalism proved that this emerging young Italian was a force to be reckoned with. She got her Italian break in 1984 with Rossini's Adelaide di Borgogna. Mariella Devia took the step toward Norma in 2013 in Bologna. She proved not only that she could carry the role from start to finish with no hint of loss in consistency but that her class was intact throughout. Her one-of-a-kind Norma achieved impact mainly through her singing, and her approach to expression prized the intimate and the subtly incisive over all-out hyperbole. Over the next five years, she consolidated the role even as she cut back on public appearances, performing it more than any other part. The results heard on the present recording speak for themselves.

Montserrat Caballe, Jon Vickers and Josephine Veasey are the featured singers in Bellini's masterpiece. Giuseppe Patane conducts the orchestra of Teatro Regio di Torino.