NEW YORK (AP) – Joyce DiDonato was unsure at first how to approach her character of Adalgisa in Bellini’s “Norma,” but she knew she didn’t want to play her as “sort of a stock character who’s the good girl and crying all the time.”
“I don’t do insipid very well,” the celebrated American mezzo said with a smile.
In the bel canto masterpiece set during the Roman occupation of England, Adalgisa is a novice Druid priestess who is devoted to her leader, Norma. But she has also fallen in love with the proconsul Pollione and is about to run off with him to Rome when she learns that he has secretly fathered two children by Norma. Horrified, she rejects her lover and reaffirms her loyalty to the high priestess.
Starting rehearsals for her first staged production of the work, which opened the Metropolitan Opera season last week, DiDonato said she found Adalgisa “a bit of an enigma.” But the key to her character emerged after a few days.
“It was the idea of her utter and complete puppy-dog devotion, to her god, to Norma, to Pollione and then again to Norma,” DiDonato said in an interview in her dressing room. “It’s not exactly naivete but a real purity and innocence. Understanding that allowed me to give her a backbone.”