Norma, Royal Opera House, London, review: 'The work takes wing gloriously at the close'

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Bellini’s opera Norma is about punitive colonialism, but its heroine doesn’t have to be high priestess of a druidic cult in Roman-occupied Gaul. It can transplant to many places and times: Christopher Alden’s recent English National Opera production placed it convincingly in an Amish enclave in 19th-century America, colonised by speculators.

But Alex Olle and the Catalan collective La Fura dels Baus have hit on a transplant that doesn’t work. Their druids are members of something like the Opus Dei branch of Catholicism, and, given that cult’s misogyny, it’s inconceivable that Norma should be its local leader. Their druidic “sacred grove” is a mobile thicket of crucifixes suggesting nothing beyond itself, and – apart from a gratuitous extra twist in the final scene – the direction is wooden and the characterisation perfunctory: the premiere was roundly booed.

But since this is one of the greatest of all bel canto operas, and since the cast is exceptionally strong, it’s still a show worth catching. Sonya Yoncheva sings the title role with magnificent authority, and the duets between her and Sonia Ganassi, as the young priestess Adalgisa, are intensely dramatic. Joseph Calleja as Pollione may spend much of the evening in recital mode, but his timelessly beautiful voice has never sounded better. Thanks to Antonio Pappano in the pit and a chorus on resonant form, the work takes wing gloriously at the close.