“Norma” by Vincenzo Bellini

Notes on the Libretto

Felice Romani's libretto for Norma was drawn from Alexandre Soumet's French tragedy Norma, ou L'infanticide, first performed in Paris only a few months before Bellini began work on the opera. Romani substantially reshaped the drama for the operatic stage, concentrating its action and giving particular prominence to the conflict between Norma's public authority as a Druid priestess and her concealed life as Pollione's lover and the mother of his children. The opera received its première at La Scala on 26 December 1831.

Romani's Italian often possesses a compressed poetic character that resists literal translation. In the celebrated prayer Casta diva, for example, the verb inargenti—literally, “you silver”—describes the moonlight falling upon the sacred trees. The image is more precise and evocative than a simple “illuminate,” and illustrates the difficulty of preserving Romani's imagery in English without making the translation unnaturally elaborate. The same passage contains older poetic forms such as de' cori and vel, characteristic of the elevated diction of nineteenth-century Italian libretti.

Comparison of circulating Italian texts also reveals small but significant transcription errors. One online text, for instance, gives “Al noi volgi il bel sembiante” where the correct reading is “A noi volgi il bel sembiante.” Such minor corruptions are particularly easy to perpetuate when historical libretti pass through successive digital transcriptions, and careful comparison is therefore essential when preparing the aligned text.