Bellini’s advice to librettists in 1834 might profitably hang above the desks of all who would pursue this singular art today: ‘Carve in your head in adamantine letters: Opera must make people weep, feel horrified, die through singing. It is wrong to want to write all the numbers the same way,but they must all be somehow shaped so as to make the music intelligible through their clarity of expression, at once concise and striking.’

Much of it could apply to his opera Norma. Most of the music was written between September and November 1831 at Blevio on Lake Como, where Bellini was a guest of the great diva Giuditta Pasta, who created the role of Norma. For more than a decade she was the greatest soprano in Europe and undoubtedly influenced the development of Bellini’s vocal style.