Lina Tetriani singing Casta Diva in Norma at Theatre Chatelet. Foto: Marie-Noëlle Robert

BRAVA for the female singers, headed by a wonderful LINA TETRIANI, who was perfect and wonderful in the titelrole. She is following close in the footsteps of former world famous singers as Norma, Montserrat Caballet and Maria Callas. When shall we hear her at Opera National de Paris, Covent Garden and The Metropolitan Opera?

The beautiful singing PAULINA PFEIFFER, was a great experience as Adalgisa, she has it!, and in the great Swedish-Nordic singing tradition, headed by Birgit Nilsson, Elisabeth Söderström, Kirsten Flagstad, Ingrid Bjoner. Paulina Pfeiffer has this little extra which is needed. I shouldnt be surprised if she soon could be one of the great Wagner singers in the world, but hopefully not “only” Wagner, too the other many great roles in the Lyric Dramatic repertoir are all waiting for her and her beautiful voice.  The duets between Lina Tetriani and Paulina Pfeiffer was of an extraordinary beauty. I trusted in both these young female singers, they were the figurs that they were playing in the performance. Blandine Staskiewicz sung Clotilde. BRAVA
.

Lina Tetriani and Paulina Pfeiffer, Foto: Marie-Noëlle Robert

BRAVO to the male singers, headed by the very good tenor NIKOLAI SCHUKOFF as Pollione, which had an extraordinary beauty in his voice, and all the power that he needed to shine on top of the ensembles together with the two female singers Lina Tetriani and Paulina Pfeiffer.

As Groveso Wojtek Smilek came and saved all the performance, as the advertised Nicolas Testé has lost his voice. So the fact became so that Nicolas Testé was acting and miming the texte on stage and Wojtek Smilek  was singing the role standing at the left side, visible for the audience. His bass voice is beautiful, and it was very sporty to step in and save the performance for all of us.  Luciano Botelho sung Flavio. BRAVO.

Jean-Christophe Spinosi. Foto: Isabelle Levy

BRAVO   to the conductor JEAN-CHRISTOPHE SPINOSI, I had the feeling that he had all the very good musically quality of the whole performance very safe in his hands
. He gave it all wonderful tempi and he formed all the musically part of the performance with first class competance. In addition I was placed so that Icould follow his signs giving to the singers and the choir, this gave me a good safe feeling, this performance was in the very best hands. He is in deed a capasity
. BRAVO.

BRAVI to the Orchestre – Ensemble MATHEUS, and to the Choir of the Chatelet Theatre. Both parts was playing and singing great. I specially noticed the homogenity and beauty in the orchestral big parts, and the fantastic power from the Choir, Nicholas Jenkins, leader of the choir, has done a great job in preparing and rehearsing the choir for this big job, which they solved first class.  The beautiful viloncello solo in the beginning of the second act was excellent played by Jérôme Pernoo.  BRAVI.

BUUH! Unfortunately by making a stage that I didn´t understand, Peter Mussbach together with Daniela Juckel as responsible for the staging and the scenography has made something, which for me not had anyting with the history that the singers were singing to do. With strange stage ideas, three round balls, which was being moved around on stage all the times. In addition a modell horse which too was moved around all the time, and in the end burned down. This was followed by a strange costume idea, by Andreas Schmidt-Futterer, in off white for all the choir, and the only colours and extraordinary costumes were made for the five of the leading six roles. Unfortunately these costumes was not 100% good. The long evening dress for Norma was beautiful, soo was her large coat, but for me when I saw the coat I was thinking a bout the Old Mefistofelis in the musical Cats, and that was confusing, and other kind of material could have been used. Her following up by Oroveso in a very generouse coat with a hut in the same colour as Normas dress was OK, but then I got the feeling of a Liberace figure. Which when Nicolas Testé was mimimng and acting the role became rather comically. To let the handsome looking Nikolai Schukoff appear seminude some of the time in gold makeup and ress was OK, his jacket he used some of time was great.  Paulina Pfeiffers costume was like from an other style, looking more like it could have been belonging to The Sound of Music.

Nicolas Teste and Lina Tetriani. Foto: Marie-Noëlle Robert

In the staging by Peter Mussbach, I didn´t understand what his meaning was with the three balls, and to let the choir look like as audience in the Cinema, where there not was coming any thing of the history background was confusing. Further one to let the choir, and acrobats and statists act like they were mad, during the big choir parts spoiled a lot of the musically experienec, but good was that the Choir managed to sing during all this strange acting. Peter Mussbachs staging ideas looked to me like the world famous Norwegian staging personality Stein Winge, which allways are putting in effects, as he is afraid that the music and the singing soloists cant manage to keep the interest for the performance at all
. That is wrong. In this case this extra acting spoiled a lot. BUUH!

However. The stage diector let the choir be completely still when some of the most beautifully parts, arias and duets was performed, that was intelligent and perfectly done. Another thing during the way I observed some beautyfull pictures made by the choir and by using the scenographic effects, One of them is the very beautiful finishing picture of the first Act, (BRAVO).  The scenography alone, as seen outside this performance, had many good ideas, and was some times beautiful in the lighting made by Alexander Koppelmann. Axel Bott is written as responsible for the Dramaturgie. I think he should consider his idea. It didn´t work.

Paulina Pfeiffer and Nikolai Schokoff, foto Marie-Noëlle Robert

The texting on top of the stage and in both sides worked very well.

The audience were very active. The screaming of Bravo and Buuh was good, and the temperature was very high, It seems to me that the audience liked many parts of the performance. Why some tried to BUUH of the conductor I don undestand. He was first class. And in addition. It is good to enjoy that a young very talented conductor is doing such a first class job. I hope to enjoy Jean-Christophe Spinosi conducting often in the future around in the whole international music world!

NORMA

. Music: Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835). Opera in two actes (1831). Libretto by Felice Romani after a tragedy of Alexandre Soumet.