COMPOSERS: Bellini
LABELS: Decca
ALBUM TITLE: Bellini
WORKS: Norma
PERFORMER: Hasmik Papian, Gegam Grigorian, Varduhi Khachatrian. A film by Boris Airapetian
CATALOGUE NO: 074 3147 (NTSC system; dts 5.1; 4:3 picture ratio)
Watch, and boggle. Why did Decca
buy this when so many classic
performances languish unreleased?
Producer Boris Airapetian decided
to film his popular stage production
among the hills of his native Armenia.
And the result is, well, bizarre.
For a start, stagey cardboard axes,
knobbly-knee costumes and funny
headgear look ludicrous against
real settings. One expects Asterix to
drop in. Nor do these spectacular
rocky slopes with their scrubby
trees remotely evoke deep-forested
Gaul, forcing Norma to prophesy,
wildly inappropriately, in a Roman
temple, jazzed up with improbable
stage idols. And Airapetian gilds all
this with inept cinematic devices,
awkward cuts, irrelevant landscape
pans, clips from old sword-andsandal
epics and Norma’s golden
sickle soaring kitschily to become the
moon. The soundtrack acoustic is
echoey, the lip-sync often a beat out.
On the other hand, we see
worse every day from posturing
producers, less honestly devoted
to the work. And the musical side,
wholly Armenian, is by no means
negligible. Hasmik Papian makes
for a fiery-voiced Norma and the
two-timing Pollione, Gregorian, a
Kirov star, retains his splendid spinto
ring, even if he looks like a thickset
mafia boss. Ovakian is a sonorous
Oroveso. Khachatrian’s Adalgisa is
more ordinary, and the chorus sturdy though ragged, but Lavchian and the
orchestra play with Italianate fervour.
It’s hard to recommend this,
exactly, but it may appeal to those
who enjoy a good old-fashioned sing. Michael Scott Rohan