This is the first and best of Joan Sutherland’s two recorded Normas. Despite La Stupenda’s aversion to consonants, her singing is stunning in a killer role whose technical challenges she tosses off like a beginner’s exercise. This 1964 recording captures her well before her droopy phase, but the opera’s many lyric, slow sections are more languorous than they should be. Thus her “Casta diva” drags, an effect exacerbated by the conductor’s sluggish rhythms. So an aria that’s overwhelming in versions by Callas and Ponselle, among others, comes off here as overly cool, impressive as sheer vocalism but emotionally flat.
In large part, such failings can be attributed to Richard Bonynge’s conducting. Alongside Serafin (for both EMI Callas recordings) he seems unidiomatic; everything is in its proper place but slow music is leaden and faster music seems merely hectic. The stylish rubatos that enable phrases to breathe and invest Bellini’s long lines with a natural flow just aren’t there. Two decades later, when Bonynge led Sutherland’s remake of the opera, he was much more comfortable with the elusive Bellinian style but the soprano was a bit past her prime.
Whatever Bonynge’s shortcomings as conductor on this set, his detective work did unearth long-neglected portions of the score that had been routinely cut in performance, including additions to the Act 1 Norma/Adalgisa duet, that materially add to its interest. The Adalgisa is arguably the best on disc–Marilyn Horne is as sensational a singer as Sutherland and one with a more gutsy style and a sharper dramatic sense. The Pollione is John Alexander, who supplies a bit more gustiness than the part should have. His is a burly tenor whose timbre occasionally is reminiscent of Jon Vickers’, but the comparison ends there. Alexander makes a worthy effort but he simply doesn’t sound right for the part; he lacks the necessary Italianite bite to the high notes and tender warmth in the lyric passages.
The vividly impactful engineering turns from asset to disadvantage in some temple scenes where the acoustic becomes cavernous, singers are placed at a distance, and a great 1960s recording turns sour. Text and translations are provided, but only via your computer’s CD-ROM drive, a dumb idea that also disfigures Decca’s Great Singers series. If you’re a Sutherland or Horne fan you’ll need this set if you haven’t already picked it up in its previous incarnations. But until you’ve heard Callas you haven’t heard Norma.
