NORMA
VINCENZO BELLINI NORMA
Tragedia lirica in due atti di Felice Romani Mariella Devia Annalisa Stroppa Stefan Pop Riccardo Fassi Elena Traversi Manuel Pierattelli
ORCHESTRA DEL TEATRO CARLO FELICE CORO DEL TEATRO CARLO FELICE
Conductor ANDREA BATTISTONI
Regia LUIGI DI GANGI e UGO GIACOMAZZI
Recorded live at the Teatro Carlo Felice, Genova, January 2018
This is not simply a recording of Norma as staged in January 2018 at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, although it is certainly important as a document of a new edition of that opera. Its real value is that it is the superb conclusion to the career of Mariella Devia, one of the finest Belcanto singers of our time, (although her last actual performance in this opera was on 19 May that year at La Fenice in Venice). 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 be judged. At the beginning of her career, Devia had to emigrate to the USA where the Belcanto standard was not just Scotto but the untouchable Sutherland and Sills. Thrown in at the deep end, Mariella Devia's mettle and professionalism proved that this emerging young Italian was a force to be reckoned with. The Met welcomed her on her debut in Rigoletto in 1979 and Carnegie Hall launched her with a Lakmé in 1981 that proved her thoroughbred status beyond question. She did not get her big break in Italy, however, until 1984 with Rossini's Adelaide di Borgogna at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca.