The music
Casta diva and Norma: what you are hearing
What Norma is about, why Casta diva became the best-known Bellini aria, and how to listen to bel canto in a church concert without the plot in front of you.
Reserve seats for the concert ↗What Norma is
Norma is an opera in two acts, called a tragedia lirica, by Vincenzo Bellini. The libretto is by Felice Romani, after a French play by Alexandre Soumet. It was first staged at La Scala in Milan on 26 December 1831. It is regarded as a leading example of bel canto, and the title role is among the most demanding in the soprano repertoire. Many Bellini concerts, in Catania and elsewhere, are built around its best-known music.
The story in brief
The setting is Gaul under Roman occupation. Norma, high priestess of the druids, has broken her vows and secretly borne children to Pollione, the Roman proconsul. Pollione now loves a younger priestess, Adalgisa, and a love triangle follows. You do not need the plot to enjoy a concert, but knowing that the music is full of divided loyalties explains its pull.
The prayer to the moon
Casta diva is the cavatina in Act 1 in which Norma prays to the moon goddess, the chaste goddess of the title, for peace. It is a slow, floating line that the voice has to sustain with perfect control, with ornaments that grow out of the melody rather than interrupting it. It is now one of the most famous arias of the nineteenth century, and it is the piece most people mean when they say they want to hear Bellini.
The singer who nearly refused it
Giuditta Pasta created Norma, and when rehearsals began on 5 December 1831 she balked at Casta diva. She felt the aria was ill adapted to her voice. Bellini persuaded her to keep trying for a week, after which she adapted to it and admitted her mistake. It is a reminder that the piece that now defines the role nearly was not sung at all.
A cool first night
Norma did not begin triumphantly. Bellini wrote to Florimo on the night of the premiere about a fiasco and the indifference of the audience. He blamed tired singers and the hostile attitudes of a journal owner and his supporters, and said the second evening was warmer. From that second performance the opera was recognised as a success, and La Scala alone gave it 208 performances by the end of the nineteenth century.
Norma travels
Norma reached London on 20 June 1833 and the United States, in New Orleans, on 1 April 1836. The Metropolitan Opera revived it in 1927 with Rosa Ponselle, its first performance there since 1892. In 2025 Jessica Pratt sang Casta diva at La Scala in G major, the key Bellini originally conceived, for the first time in the theatre where it was written. The aria is still being rethought almost two centuries on.
Bel canto in a sentence
Bel canto is Italian for beautiful singing. It describes a style that dominated much of Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with smooth, even tone, legato phrasing and florid ornament, and Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti are its best-known names. The term is loose, but for a listener it means melody that the voice carries from start to finish.
The Normas people remember
Pasta was the first Norma. In the twentieth century Rosa Ponselle sang the role in New York and London, and after the Second World War Maria Callas, Leyla Gencer, Joan Sutherland and Montserrat Caballé became its leading interpreters. Callas alone sang it in 89 stage performances. Recordings of Casta diva by these singers are easy to find, and hearing two or three before your concert sharpens your ear for live singing.
How to listen in a church concert
A recital with no sets and no translation display asks you to listen to the line. Follow one phrase from its start to its end and notice how the singer breathes, where the voice rises and how the orchestra steps back. You will hear more in the first aria than in a whole evening of half-attention. If you know one piece in advance, make it Casta diva, so that when it arrives you can enjoy it rather than meet it for the first time.
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