Performer: Samantha Korbey

Visually traditional, this Norma often indulged on the most predictable aspects of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera, unfortunately missing the opportunity of bringing a bigger audience to the theatre and showcasing the vastness of Italian opera. 

Stefano Poda’s deeply intellectual mis-en-scene immersed the bourgeois love affair between Marguerite and Faust in an abstract and transcendental tangle of philosophical, existential and liturgical motifs. However, an overflowing symbolism sounded sometimes academic, but the visual effects were suggestive if not properly enchanting.

in Turin, British director Walter Sutcliffe sets Otello right in the middle of a never-ending battle and Gianandrea Noseda leads a passionate, rigorous account of the score.