[The librettist for Bellini's Norma was the poet Felice Romani. He based his libretto on Alexandre Soumet's play Norma. The following article traces some of the deeper sources for this work. - NMR]
While the immediate source for Bellini's opera Norma, was Alexandre Soumet's 1831 Norma, a tragedy in five acts and in verse, its roots go back to the Greek myth of Medea. Medea was a priestess of the moon-goddess in Colchis in Asia Minor. She fell in love with Jason, helped him win the Golden Fleece, and bore him two sons before he left her for Glauce (or Creusa), the daughter of King Creon. Unlike Norma, Medea did cut the throats of her children, and she fled from Corinth to Athens. There she married Aegeus but got into trouble when she tried to poison Theseus. Elements of her story were used in operas by several different French composers. Romani wrote the libretto for Mayr's 1813 Medea in Corinto. That opera was very popular and provided Giuditta Pastawith one of her greatest roles.
The German Velléda was mentioned by Tacitus as a hermit prophetess who supported rebellion against the Romans. Chateaubriand placed her in Gaul in his 1809 opera Les martyrs about a Gallic priestess. A chorus of bards sings of cutting the mistletoe from a Druid oak with a golden sickle; there is a sacred dead tree called Irminsul in the forest, Velléda falls in love with and seduces a Roman soldier, Eudore, who is a Christian. She then cries rape and calls for the Gauls to revolt against the Romans. During the battle she repents, confesses her guilt and cuts her own throat with her golden sickle.
In 1821 Romani wrote La Sacerdotess d'Irminsul. for the composer Pacini. It takes place in Saxony in the year 772. (It was there that Charlemagne destroyed the most famous of the historical Irminsul pillars.) Much of it foreshadowed Norma; a pagan priestess falls for a general in Charlemagne's army. However, it ends happily with Norma's conversion to Christianity and marriage to her general.
All of the above elements were brought together in Soumet's Norma. Romani, as ever ready to seize upon the latest success from Paris, adapted it to produce the Norma we know today. Soumet's Clothilde is a Christian and tells Norma's children about her religion. Orovèso is simply a Gaul, not Norma's father. While the set features the oak of Irminsul (now moved from Germany to Gaul) and a Druid altar, there is no cutting of the mistletoe or any other Druid ceremony. Norma's children have speaking parts and the dream given to Pollione in Norma is that of one of these children.
Norma was a prisoner in Rome for three years and considers it her second home. She has made it possible for Pollion to function by keeping the Gauls peaceful and continually reminds him of that fact. He has promised to take her and the children back to Rome with him, but while he acknowledges his debt to her, he becomes repulsed by her fanatical attentions. He considers abandoning her for a young priestess, Adalgise. When he refuses to take Norma to Rome, she swears vengeance, threatening to kill herself and her children, but can not go through with it.
Romani kept most of the elements of Soumet's story but removed the references to Christianity and Norma's mad scene.
Bellini's Norma is usually set in 50 BC, soon after Caesar's conquest of Gaul, the earlier versions of the story would have had to be set about AD 50, since a least one of the characters is a Christian.
Alexandre Soumet (1786-1845) was a poet and author of plays. He was elected to the Academie Francaise in 1824. A poem, Jeanne d'Arc, was published at the expense of the state. He was librarian at the palace of Saint-Cloud and of Rambouillet under the Restoration, then of the Compiègne under Louis-Philippe. He was a strong supporter of Victor Hugo and the Romantic Movement.