PRESS RELEASE
Venice, April 2015
Norma by Vincenzo Bellini
On Wednesday 20 May 2015 at 19.00 (subscription cycle A) a new production will be
performed at Teatro La Fenice of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma, a two-act tragic opera to a libretto by
Felice Romani based on the same-named tragedy by Alexandre Soumet; after having its world
première at Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 26 December 1831 it then debuted at La Fenice one year
later on 26 December 1832.
Performed in Venice for the last time in 1993, Bellini’s masterpiece will go on stage with a
highly interesting production that is a special project belonging to the 56th International Art
Biennale in Venice, open from 9 May to 22 November 2015. Direction, sets and costumes will be
by the American artist Kara Walker who, in the light of her artistic experience, will try her hand at
the strong themes of this opera; she has always focussed on the implicit contradictions of
domination and power, the political and psychological consequences of racial and sexual prejudice,
as well as on the trauma that accompanies identity formation in contexts of oppression and
violence.
As the artistic director of Fondazione Teatro La Fenice, Fortunato Ortombina points out,
“The concept of domination plays a key role in Norma: the Roman proconsul Pollione seduces and
falls in love with a priestess of Gaul, conquered by the Romans. This theme is very close to Kara
Wallker’s heart, who was also chosen owing to the distance and alterity of her art compared to our
operatic traditions”.
“Norma represents the high point, if not the absolute peak of canto in the opera”, the artistic
director continues, “and the paradox of an art that transforms the narration of acts of brutality and
the abuse of power into something beautiful is one of the main themes of Walker’s work. She is
known for her elegant and seemingly traditional black silhouettes set against a white background,
the allure of which is unsettled by the artist’s complex and provocative reworking of this form to
narrate the history of black slavery in the American South”.
Norma’s heart-ache, torn between her role as high-priestess and her betrayed love for the
enemy Pollione, her shattered hopes of being able to create an identity that is undermined by an
unavoidable relationship of subordination, attempted infanticide and finally suicide as the only way
out of an unbearable identity conflict are the main themes in Bellini’s opera; it is these themes that
Kara Walker will be working on, highlighting the complex dynamics of desire fuelling the
protagonists, including the desperate female solidarity represented by the character Adalgisa.
“The intention of reaffirming the relevance of the great Italian operatic season using
innovative, diverse forms of language from more up-to-date contemporary expressions" the
Superintendent of Fondazione Teatro La Fenice Cristiano Chiarot said, “underlies the relationship
that La Fenice has with the Sector of the Biennale Visual Arts. After the successful production of
Madama Butterfly by Mariko Mori in 2013, we wanted to repeat the experience, entrusting Norma,
which can be described as the apex of a certain classicism, to Kara Walker. With her first opera
production, this great artist has therefore studied in much greater depth and with both passion and
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vitality the enchantment and seduction of Bellini's masterpieces, highlighting the themes in the
narration in which we still find ourselves involved: racial and religious conflicts, sexual
conditioning and subjection. What we shall see will enable us as a contemporary audience to
remember and relive this Bellinian drama as if it were our own personal drama.
The musical direction of Bellini’s masterpiece, the climax of his opera production, will be
entrusted to the hands of Gaetano d’Espinosa who will conduct the Orchestra of Teatro La Fenice,
and its Choir, directed by Claudio Marino Moretti.
The main cast includes names of the greatest prestige, such as the tenor Gregory Kunde as
the Roman proconsul Pollione, the soprano Carmela Remigio (alternating with Maria Billeri) as the
high priestess Norma, the mezzo soprano Veronica Simeoni (alternating with Roxana
Constantinescu) as the young priestess Adalgisa and the bass Dmitry Beloselskiy as Oroveso, chief
of the druids and Norma’s father. The soprano Anna Bordignon will be Clotilde, Norma’s close
friend, and the tenor Emanuele Giannino Flavio, Pollione’s friend.
The première on Wednesday, with a recorded broadcast on Rai Radio3, will be followed by
three repeat performances in May: Sunday 24 (subscription cycle B) at 15.30, Wednesday 27
(subscription cycle D) at 19.00 and Saturday 30 (subscription cycle C) at 15.30; there will also be
two performances in June: Wednesday 3 (subscription cycle E) and Saturday 6 (no subscription
cycle) at 19.00. The opera will alternate on the stage of La Fenice with La Traviata and Madama
Butterfly, with the production by Alex Rigola (direction) and Mariko Mori (set and costumes),
which was a special project as part of the International Art Biennale in 2013.
Staged at La Fenice three times in the past fifty years, in 1966 (with Elinor Ross, Mario Del
Monaco and Fiorenza Cossotto, conductor Ettore Gracis, direction Alberto Fassini), 1972 (with
Cristina Deutekom, Bruno Prevedi and Bianca Maria Casoni, conductor Francesco Molinari
Pradelli, direction di Lamberto Puggelli) and 1993 (with Monica Pick-Hieronimi, Dano Raffanti
and Luciana D’Intino, conductor Emil Tabakov, direction di Ugo Tessitore), Norma is Vincenzo
Bellini’s third last opera as well as the most often performed (the famous aria ‘Casta diva’ has been
a test bench for the greatest sopranos in the world). A two-act tragic opera to a libretto by Felice
Romani that had its world première at the Scala on 26 December 1831, it combines the dramatic
love story between the female lead and the proconsul Pollione with an equally tragic political
dimension between the conquered (the Gauls, with Norma as their high-priestess), and the
conqueror (the Roman occupation army). With a succession of coup-de-théâtre, in the final climax
the heroine, realising she betrayed her own people out of love, sentences herself to the stake,
followed by Pollione who is abased but admires the nobility of her gesture.
KARA WALKER
New York-based artist Kara Walker is best known for her candid investigation of race, gender,
sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures that have appeared in numerous exhibitions
worldwide.
Born in Stockton, California in 1969, Walker was raised in Atlanta, Georgia from the age of
13. She studied at the Atlanta College of Art (BFA, 1991) and the Rhode Island School of Design
(MFA, 1994). She is the recipient of many awards, notably the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation Achievement Award in 1997 and the United States Artists Eileen Harris Norton
Fellowship in 2008. In 2012, Walker became a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. Her work can be found in numerous museums and public collections including The
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; the Museo Nazionale delle
Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI), Rome; and Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt.
Walker’s major survey exhibition, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My
Oppressor, My Love, was organized by The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis where it premiered
in February 2007 before traveling to ARC/ Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; The Whitney
Museum of American Art in New York; The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; and the Museum of
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Modern Art in Fort Worth. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented the Art Institute of
Chicago; Camden Arts Centre in London; and Metropolitan Arts Center (MAC) in Belfast.
In spring 2014, Walker’s first large scale public project, a monumental installation entitled
A Subtlety: Or… the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans
who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the
Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant, was on view at the abandoned
Domino Sugar refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Commissioned and presented by Creative Time,
the project – a massive sugar covered sphinx-like sculpture – responded to and reflected on troubled
history of sugar.
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