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Opera

Long live ENO!

The opera company’s staggering Norma is a vindication of this questionable art form

27 February 2016

9:00 AM

27 February 2016

9:00 AM

Norma

English National Opera, in rep until 11 March

The three most moving, transporting death scenes in 19th-century opera all involve the respective heroines mounting a funeral pyre — partly, no doubt, a matter of operatic convention and fashion, but also recalling opera to its duty as a rite of purification. Berlioz’s Didon in Les Troyens, like her creator, is so relentless in her grasp of the truth that she fails to achieve anything but a vision of Carthage overcome by Rome, and ends in despair and execration.

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