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Una de las grandes Normas de todos los tiempos, Rosa Ponselle, debutó el papel en el MET, el 16 de Noviembre de 1927. La Ponselle llegó a cantar Norma en 34 ocasiones, y se convirtió en la referencia ineludible del rol durante el siguiente decenio.
Este fue el reparto para la ocasión:
Norma...................Rosa Ponselle
Pollione................Giacomo Lauri-Volpi
Adalgisa................Marion Telva
Oroveso.................Ezio Pinza
Flavio..................Giordano Paltrinieri
Clotilde................Minnie Egener
Conductor...............Tullio Serafin
Director................Samuel Thewman
Designer................Joseph Urban
y ésta la reacción de la crítica:
A MAGNIFICENT REVIVAL OF 'NORMA"
Once more the past has proved Mr. Gatti-Casazza's best bet. Last winter he revived "Mignon" after it had been absent for nearly a score of years from the Metropolitan stage. The revival was made with some hesitation, experimentally. It turned out, as far as the favor of the patrons went, the event of the entire operatic term.
Wednesday evening of last week Mr. Gatti-Casazza restored to currency Bellini's "Norma" and amid such scenes of enthusiasm as the Metropolitan has seldom witnessed. This was a riskier revival that that of "Mignon," for though "Norma" is a work of infinitely greater genius, it dates from an earlier generation and a remoter mode, and it is inexorable in the demands that it makes on those who sing it. Moreover, there had been no Metropolitan performances of "Norma" since February 3, 1892, when the singing-actress who filled the tile rôle was that soprano of legendary prowess and abiding fame, the mighty Lilli Lehmann.
But in the case of this restoration from so distant a past the risk involved resulted in immediate and impressive gain. 'Norma" was a triumph alike for the director who sponsored it and for the artists who participated in the presentation - in particular for Mr. Serafin, the devoted and tireless conductor, and Miss Rosa Ponselle, who proved herself a singer worthy to wear the mantle that has descended to her from the old-time divas of imperishable renown. To hear the beautiful, touching, and noble melodies of the Druid priestess sung by a voice so rich and with such a lovely appreciation of the true spirit of "bel canto" was in itself a keen and rewarding pleasure.
How the audience felt about it may be gathered from the fact that at the end of "Casta Diva," that exquisite supplication to the moon, the performance came to a full stop while the venerable walls of Mr. Gatti-Casazza's yellow temple fairly shook with the storm of delight and approval that burst from the huge audience. Similar tempests of applause punctuated the performance throughout the evening for the score of "Norma" abounds in solos, duets, trios, and large concerted numbers, which, when properly sung, cannot fail to stir the listener to enthusiastic manifestations.
It is worth noting, by the way, that those who consigned the plague of carriage calls to oblivion and stayed though regardless to the very end were abundantly compensated for so doing by a thrilling performance of the great closing ensemble in E major (with the flatted sixth), a movement which anticipates the culminating pages of 'Tristan und Isolde," and from which not only Wagner (always a fervent admirer of Bellini), but Liszt borrowed with alacrity...
If ever a rôle of opera demanded acting, this rôle of Norma does. To quote from the incomparable Chorley - he tells us that Giulia Grisi, perhaps the most famous of all Normas, disclosed in the part "the wild ferocity of the tigress, but a certain frantic charm therewith which carried away the hearer." Miss Ponselle has as yet contrived this unique and fascinating fusion. Nevertheless, her Norma, even more than her Julia in "La Vestale," proves the progress that she had made in histrionic technic, her impressive advance toward the acquisition of the grand manner. She is a memorable figure as the white-robed priestess with the tawny mane, whether invoking peace beneath the sacred oak amid the streaming moonlight, or erect before the high altar of her god in the bitter majesty of self-denunciation.
The crude young woman with the heaven-sent voice who nine years previously had made her first awkward appearance in opera on that same stage as the Donna Leonora of "La Forza del Destino" had indeed traveled far. Not yet the consummate singing-actress that she may one day become, the splendid achievement and still more splendid promise of her Norma hold out hope that the gracious forces of her manifest destiny will in the end prevail and that, daring all things, she will achieve them all.
Along with the prima donna of great gifts, praise excelling must go to the Maestro Serafin, who, like the on-driving engine of a capital ship, was the very heart and soul of the representation. Every measure of the score was vivified by his propulsive force, every phrase declared the glory of the fine and sensitive ideal, the searching affection and unswerving faith that animated his beat and gave light unto all his ways. This revival of "Norma" is surely a monument to his artistic consecration.
If of the other participants in the performance praise must be spoken in less abundance, they all deserve a large measure of respect and gratitude for the seriousness of their artistic purpose. Miss Telva's voice has not the freedom and certainty in the upper range that the music of Adalgisa requires, and yet on this occasion she was more nearly the "bel cantist," a singer in the full sense, than ever before. And the part of Adalgisa is especially difficult to cast, because it is at once dangerously high for a contralto and uncomfortably low for the usual modern soprano.
Mr. Lauri-Volpi made a superb figure of a Roman pro-consul and acted with discretion and force. In the earlier part of the evening he relapsed at moments into his habit of shouting, but in the last act he surprised the skeptical by his really fine and tempered vocal delivery. Unfortunately, Mr. Pinza's basso had not the nobility of tone nor even the freedom and steadiness, that one desires in the music of Oroveso.
The elaborate scenery by Joseph Urban and the costumes of the warrior Gauls, while picturesque, were rather dangerously suggestive of "Goetterdammerung." A wildness, more classical and stylized, suggesting the steel engraving of the 1830's, with gray and silvers as the prevailing tone, would have been more in keeping with Bellini's decade and the genius of his music.
Yet, all in all, this was a production of which Mr. Gatti-Casazza and his coadjutors may be justly proud. It possessed that incandescence, that magnetic, compelling power which is none to common in any opera house and rare indeed in the great spaces of our Metropolitan, a hall of song by means favorable to the conduct and transmission of the electric thrill. All the more brilliant, then, the success of Miss Ponselle, Mr. Serafin, and their colleagues, so ardently sponsored by Mr. Gatti-Casazza.
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