I faced ghost of La Scala to bring opera's most challenging role home

Times

2 days ago

For half a century, a ghost has stalked the boards and balconies of the home of Italian opera.
Norma, Vincenzo Bellini's masterpiece, with a leading role seen as one of the art form's most demanding, premiered here in 1831. For the past 48 years, however, no one has dared to play the druid princess on the hallowed stage of Milan's La Scala.
The 'spectre', as the Italian press have called it, is the legacy of Maria Callas — the legendary Greek-American soprano whose voice lit up opera houses on both sides of the Atlantic as the world reeled from the ravages of war. In 1952, at the height of her powers, La divina (as she was known in Italy) stepped on to La Scala's stage in the role of Norma. Her performance that night went down in history.
Contemporary critics said she vanquished the 'hesitation and distrust' of audiences at the Milan house, famed for booing and jeering performers that fall short of their standards, once and for all.
In 1977, the Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé, in the shadow of Callas, was the last at La Scala to take on Norma — a cornerstone of the Italian bel canto genre famed for its showpiece aria, Casta diva. No one has since braved the boos. Until June 27 this year.
'I have defeated the blessed ghosts of Callas, of Casta diva, of the perfect pianissimo,' says Marina Rebeka, the Latvian soprano who took on the challenge of reviving Norma.
'Anybody who sings this role is compared to Callas,' she says in perfect Italian during a blistering hot rest day at the theatre, half a week after the production opened. She is a laid-back, bubbly soprano who is in her prime with a string of triumphs at the opera house under her belt.
Even Rebeka admits she was nervous on the opening night, partly because of one of the peculiarities of La Scala — its rowdy audience. Rebeka likens the theatre's atmosphere — raucous reaction interspersed with moments of intense concentration — to a football match.
'La Scala is not just the singers, the composers, or the stage director: La Scala is also its audience,' she says. 'It's one of the most engaged anywhere in the world.'
The loggionisti — opera fanatics who buy the cheap tickets for the theatre's two upper rungs — are responsible for the theatre's most ferocious booing. They help define a performance's perceived level of success.
'At times we applaud, at times we whistle and at times we boo,' said Giuseppe Minoia, 80, vice-president of the powerful Friends of the Loggione association, which he said represents about 800 of the die-hard fans. 'We believe we have a right to express our views.'
La Scala's status owes partly to its history. Some of the world's best-known operas — including Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, Verdi's Nabucco and Puccini's Madame Butterfly — were written for its stage. Titan conductors Arturo Toscanini, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti and Daniel Barenboim have all served as music director.
Rebeka describes her La Scala debut — in 2008 with Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims — as 'terrifying'. 'I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm singing at La Scala,' she recalls.
But the Latvian soprano has form with reviving Callas classics, and knows how brutal La Scala can be. Last year, the theatre booked her for Cherubini's Médée (1797), closely associated with Callas, ending a 62-year absence from the repertoire. The year before, during a staging of Verdi's I vespri siciliani (1855) that left many disgruntled, one exasperated spectator shouted: 'Rebeka, shoot the director!'
Many of the classic operas most closely associated with La Scala are of the bel canto genre — a term used to describe both a style of singing perfected in the 19th century, characterised by smooth legato singing and technical finesse, and the composers who crystallised the style through acrobatic music filled with trills, leaps and scales.
Opera in Italy is such a high-stakes affair because is central to national identity. Andrea Estero, editor of the Classic Voice opera magazine and president of the national association of music critics, noted that bel canto operas by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini were composed in the run-up to and during the Risorgimento or period of unification. Perhaps with the exception of Alessandro Manzoni's historical novel The Betrothed (1827), he said, Italy did not have a great 19th-century literature movement to rival that of Germany or France. 'In Italy, the national conscience was forged not by novels but by opera,' Estero said.
While the La Scala premiere of Norma in the 19th century was coldly received, the work soon became a staple; its story, about a druid priestess who secretly bears children with a Roman governor and contemplates killing her offspring in revenge, serving as a powerful vehicle for some of the greatest voices in operatic history.
Marco Vizzardelli, a 66-year-old loggionista, said the work had been in hibernation because of audiences' attachment to Callas. 'The mentality is that the past is always better than the present,' he said. 'Herein lies the problem of not being able to perform Norma.'
The title role is widely regarded as one of the most difficult, requiring a wide range, dynamic subtlety and exceptional vocal control, as well as an ability to convey a broad spectrum of emotions, from maternal love to resignation to fury. The great Italian soprano Renata Scotto called it 'the Everest of opera'.
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'It's extremely difficult because you are totally exposed,' Rebeka explains. 'The orchestra forms the basis but you are the melody — nobody doubles you.'
On the night of Norma's return, the air was thick with tension, La Scala habitués speculating about whether Rebeka would survive her trial by fire.
Her big moment, Casta diva , comes about 20 minutes in, after a fiery recitative followed by a two-second silence that, on the night, felt like an eternity, Rebeka recalls. 'You hear your heart going thump-thump, thump-thump,' she says, pumping her chest. 'I'm not capable of being blasé about it.'
The singer's nerves were evident as her voice trembled through her opening aria's marathon legato lines. But she soon settled — her famously steely voice purring into action as she climbed through wafting ornamentation to a floated high note — and grew in expressiveness and poise thereafter.
She was rewarded at the curtain call, a lone boo from the loggione a minor blemish. She also largely won over the critics, with La Repubblica declaring that 'Norma is back in La Scala's repertoire'. On the other hand, ear-splitting jeers and shouts of 'shame on you', were reserved for Olivier Py, the French director whose staging was not appreciated by many in the audience.
Rebeka remains sanguine about the isolated dissent. 'I had a boo … and I'm ready for that, because it's part of this place.'
But Rebeka, who set up her own classical music record label in 2018, says listeners are wrong to compare live singers with greats from the past heard on disc. That, she suggests, is unfair, given studio recordings usually show performers at their best.
And while some of La Scala's audience remain wedded to ideals of perfection derived from recordings, opera's beauty, she says, resides in its imperfection.
'I am not artificial intelligence. I don't sing perfectly. I'm not perfect,' Rebeka says. 'The only thing I can do in every performance is give it my all, with as much honesty as I can. The rest is out of my hands.'