IT TAKES TWO TO SING ‘NORMA’
By Mark Stryker
Free Press Music Critic

Detroit Free Press
Oct 12 2005

One soprano has the voice, the other acting

All the buzz surrounding Michigan Opera Theatre’s production of
Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece “Norma,” which opened the company’s
fall season last weekend, centers on Armenian soprano Hasmik Papian
in the title role. She portrays the larger-than-life druid priestess
whose affair with the Roman proconsul, a rapscallion as well as the
sworn enemy of her people, ends badly for all. (Now, really, who saw
that coming?)

Bellini’s ‘Norma’ THREE STARS out four stars Michigan Opera Theatre

7:30 tonight

8 p.m. Fri.-Sat.

Detroit Opera House, 1526 Broadway

313-237-7464,

$28-$113

Hasmik Papian sings the title role tonight and Sat.; Brenda Harris
on Fri.

Papian has been making an international splash in the role, and since
great Normas appear as often as Halley’s Comet, Papian has begun
to generate enormous and perhaps unreasonable expectations. That’s
the price of admission with Norma, which demands Herculean stamina,
the agility and support to sing long-breathed melodies and a rush of
coloratura fireworks, and the acting skills to create a warrior and
woman of outsize passions and complexities.

Vocally, Papian delivered the goods Saturday, spinning Bellini’s
glorious melodies into a web of lyricism. Her tone was pure and
golden. Her alluring high notes floated as if on clouds, shaped by
diminuendos of exquisite control. Her coloratura was accurate, lovely,
legato and feminine. She sounded fresh enough at the end to sing the
opera again.

Her “Casta Diva,” Norma’s famous prayer, was to die for, and her
duets with romantic rival Adalgisa — sung with grand eloquence by
mezzo soprano (and Detroiter) Irina Mishura — were as thrilling as
anything I’ve heard in 10 years at the Detroit Opera House. Yet long
stretches fell curiously flat, and had I not returned Sunday to hear
American soprano Brenda Harris replace Papian at the matinee, I might
have chalked it up to the dramatic inertness built into the opera.

Harris’ voice is weightier, her coloratura more earthbound and
her pitch less secure. She produced some sweet vocal moments but
no magic. Yet she conveyed the mercurial temperament that Papian,
for all her vocal splendor, rarely reveals. When Norma shifts into
Medea-mode and nearly kills the children she has borne with the
proconsul Pollione, I never believed that Papian might use the dagger;
but I feared for those kids when Harris stood over them.

Harris stalks the stage, exploring the political and personal
dimensions of the tragedy, and she is not afraid to twist her voice
into expressions of pain, anguish or ambivalence; Papian favors
minimalist gestures, which is a reasonable choice, but she also seems
wary of making anything other than a beautiful sound, even when the
drama calls for it.

When push comes to shove, “Norma” is an opera in which pure vocalism
probably trumps all-around stagecraft, but critics are a greedy lot:
If you could merge Papian and Harris into a single soprano, you’d
have an unimpeachable Norma.

Elsewhere, MOT’s “Norma” is less complicated. Tenor Julian Gavin
sang with firm focus and ardor as Pollione on Saturday and looked
good in tights and a ripped shirt. Dongwon Shins’ barking tenor was
less compelling Sunday. Bass Arutjun Kotchinian is an impressively
stentorian Oroveso. The chorus sings with distinction.

Mario Corradi’s efficient direction does no harm, and conductor
Stephen Lord leads an enthusiastic if sometimes untidy orchestra.

John Pascoe’s sets and costumes, created for MOT’s 1989 production
starring an autumnal Joan Sutherland, eschew Stonehenge cliches in
favor of an early 19th-Century vision of ancient times. The sets are
disappointingly dingy, but they don’t detract from the irresistible
sport of hearing Papian and Harris try to scale Mt. Everest.