‘Norma’ at the Royal Opera House
“I’m closing my eyes, it looks awful”, remarked the doughty lady behind me, who was vocally horrified by the design of the ROH’s Norma. The surprise appearance of a TV screen a few scenes later made her exclaim “Simply barbarous!” – appropriate, for an opera that’s all about what the barbarian Britons got up to behind the backs of their Roman oppressors.
Norma is a story of a pagan priestess in ancient Britain, who courts her own destruction by sleeping with a Roman proconsul. But Catalan company La Fura Dels Baus have deliberately chosen to portray her and her tribe as Christians, giving their faith all the smells and bells of the 20th century religious establishment. She sings of gathering mistletoe by moonlight, but costume designer Lluc Castells puts her in a resolutely un-mystic trouser suit and dog collar. Hundreds of near-lifesize effigies of Christ on the cross deck the stage, their presence thunking each scene over the head with a Bible’s worth of religious symbolism.
There’s something about the huge stage and non-naturalist register of operas that means that designers and directors can overshoot into wild flights of fancy: in Anthony Minghella’s Madam Butterfly for ENO, Butterfly’s huge red sash was almost a character in its own right, entangling her in a river of red as wide as the stage, then becoming a metaphor for her spilt blood.
But if Madam Butterfly’s splendour is wide open to criticisms of orientalism, this Norma is still more problematic. Trevor Nunn rightly earned an Equity reprimand for the 22-strong, all-white cast for his The Wars of the Roses trilogy. But it’s interesting that there’s been no equivalent scrutiny of this Norma, an opera performance that puts nigh on a hundred white people on stage, several in pointy white hoods and robes, in a production that feels like it’s costumed to resemble a Klan rally.
The message is clear enough: that religious fanaticism is still dangerous and present today. Alfons Flores’ design doesn’t let you forget it for a second. But the quieter message it also carries is to equate these powerless, embattled ancient Britons with the modern, anything but powerless British establishment. A reflection of the audience, right down to the controversial moment where we see Norma’s children sitting in an expensively equipped middle class living room, with white sofas and Watership Down flickering disconcertingly on the TV in front of them.
It’s a display that’s lent incredible beauty by Bellini’s music. And, especially, by Sonya Yoncheva’s astonishing performance as Norma – self-contained, steely, but with a voice that’s full of effortless tenderness. But although this establishment destroys her, it’s never destroyed in turn. Bellini’s opera is one of constantly deferred violence: Norma calls on the Britons to attack, later. She can’t bring herself to murder her illegitimate children. Or the man that’s wronged her.
La Fura Dels Baus’s production never finds an outlet for all this deferred, righteous fury (the naff screen of flames designed to represent a pyre certainly isn’t it). There’s so much sinuous heartbreak in the cunning trios between Norma, her Roman lover, and the younger woman he’s become obsessed with. But the world they live in feels stripped of danger and barbarism – TV screens aside – an opera born in the rebellion-filled 1830s, turned static.