Opus Arte reviews

First staged on 12 September 2016, the Royal Opera’s new Normawas the work of Spanish director Alex Ollé, one of the artistic co-directors of the theatre group La Fura dels Baus. In a programme note included with this DVD/Blu-ray release he asks the rhetorical questions, ‘Some will see [Norma] as a traitor to her country and her religion, but what is she really guilty of having done? Falling in love?

Freshness of vision, emotional openness, genuine ensemble theatricality, a robustly physical sense of adventure humorous and serious (but never portentous) by turns, and an underlying directorial trust in Mozart’s music: these qualities stay with me most strongly after two viewings of this DVD, among the most rewarding experiences of the opera I’ve had in nearly five decades of Magic Flute encounters.