Norma

Australian Opera Chorus and Elizabethan Sydney Orchestra production of Donizetti's opera

Dame Joan Sutherland considered Norma, the lead character of Bellini’s bel canto melodrama, one of her favourite roles. She performed the brilliant and challenging score for Australian audiences for the first time in this 1978 production at the Sydney Opera House, reuniting with her regular collaborator Margreta Elkins, who plays Adalgisa, as well as Ronald Stevens and Clifford Grant. Set in Ancient Gaul, the opera tells the story of a clash between the Druids and the occupying Romans. In the middle of it all is Norma, the high priestess caught in a dangerous love triangle. This luscious production is directed by Italian director Sandro Sequi and conducted by Richard Bonynge.

Rai adaptation of the play by G.B. Shaw.

It's hard to imagine a video opera collection without this superbly sung MET production of Bellini's I Puritani. Not that it's perfect by any means, but its excellences--most especially Anna Netrebko's electrifying singing and acting of Elvira--banish carping about other aspects of this memorable night at the opera. Netrebko is fragile from the start, her facial expressions and hand movements immediately conveying the girl's vulnerability. She has a mad scene in each act; the first when she realizes her fiancé has disappeared with another woman, the third, in the final act, a brief relapse when her returned fiancé is taken by the army to be executed. But it's in the second act that the real fireworks occur, with a Mad Scene that rivals Donizetti's Lucia for bel canto primacy. Here, Elvira is first heard off-stage, after the chorus has informed us that she's deranged. She enters wearing her wedding gown and begins Qui la voce in a voice as frail as her psyche.

Spirited American heiress Isabel Archer travels to Europe, where she navigates a complex web of relationships, ultimately committing to a fateful marriage to the charming but cruel Gilbert Osmond. This leads to profound disappointment and a tragic realization of her own choices.