Romani wrote his libretto for Bellini’s Norma after Soumet’s tragedy, first performed in Paris in 1831. Soumet’s inspiration was both Euripide’s Medea and Chateaubriand’s Les Martyrs, thus fusing the ancient vision of the mother-infanticide and the romantic landscape of druidic Gaul. The French work shows how Romani transformed a neo-classical drama to an Italian melodramma, although he kept his Norma away from murder, suicide and madness. In this new impassioned and spiritual tragedia, Norma sacrifices herself, and the Gauls worship the moon more than their own cruelty. The changes in characters, dramatic and musical structures, visual and verbal backgrounds, display how Romani, usually regarded as the librettist for romantic melodramma, outstandingly created a new Norma by giving up the fantastic and horrific features of Soumet’s text in order to focalize on moral and edifying narratives.
