What does it do to casually assumed theories of cultural equality if a civilization is founded on the idea that the gods require the ritualized butchering of human beings? When Mel Gibson released his twilight-of-the-Maya epic Apocalypto in 2006, some scholars of Mayan culture felt that the film’s gory depictions of human sacrifice implied the Maya were so “crazed and blood-thirsty” that they belonged “to a civilization that deserves to die.” Can it be that, because of their bloody ways, some civilizations were—are?—not only worthy of condemnation but also fundamentally incompatible with modernity? Do they therefore “deserve to die”?
This uncomfortable question hovers just in the background of Vincenzo Bellini’s 1831 opera Norma, a new production of which, by Sir David McVicar, just opened the 133rd season of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Set in Gaul at the end of the Gallic Wars, Norma tells the story of two druid priestesses, the eponymous Norma (Sondra Radvanovsky) and Adalgisa (Joyce DiDonato). Pollione (Joseph Calleja) is a Roman proconsul who’s got all the moves, and he’s used them to woo not one but two of the powerful, virginal priestesses. When it comes time for Pollione to return to Rome, and he has to choose whom to take with him, his double-act falls apart. When he asks the younger, Adalgisa, to come with him, both women discover his secret. But Adalgisa abandons her lover to stick by her friend. Norma is so demented with grief that she tries to bring herself to kill first her children with Pollione, then Pollione, then Adalgisa.
Meanwhile, tensions have been mounting for one of the last spasms of Gallic revolt against the Roman yoke. Though hints about “your bloody god” have been percolating from the beginning, it’s at this point that you realize that the Druids are going to need a human sacrifice for the war god. Indeed, sensitive, motherly Norma has chosen the victim for the slaughter dozens of times before: “Non mai l’altar tremendo / Di vittime mancò”—“The awful altar has never lacked victims.”
But this time, Norma nominates “a perjured priestess [who] has broken her holy vows”—herself. The Gauls are beside themselves with grief—but only because of the betrayal and because it’s their chieftain’s daughter and their beloved prophetess who must die. For the audience, this creates an alienation that heightens the pathos and terror, as the flames grow higher at the back of the stage, as some of the finest music in the Western canon swells to a climax, and as Norma, joined at last by a repentant Pollione, walks onto the pyre.
Bellini and his librettist Felice Romani, drawing on a line of Western thought that goes back to at least Tacitus, heighten the problem by making it clear that in almost all normal ways, the Gauls are the nobler, more honest, less corrupted civilization. Pollione, the only Roman (besides one of his centurions) that we see, is a contemptible character. He’s a self-pitying, shameless, two-timing cad. His willingness to say or do anything to get what he wants clearly reflects the imperial greed of his society, while Adalgisa and Norma shine with a spirit of nobility, independence, and (terrible, literal) self-sacrifice. McVicar redoubles this jarring effect by focusing on the normal rather than exotic aspects of his characters: DiDonato and Radvanovsky come across as dignified figures rather than strange, dangerous witches.
But that intensifies rather than diminishes the horror during the second act—as you realize the heroine’s complicity in past outrages; as you see that none of her noble, sympathetic countrymen would find the sacrifice particularly noteworthy if the victim were a slave, captive, or not a member of the community; as you learn the chieftain Oroveso (Matthew Rose most nights; Vazgen Gazaryan on the night I attended) is her father and yet is ultimately willing to stand by as his daughter is burnt alive to appease the gods.
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How do you approach a society where a bloody altar lurks always in the background? Where the gods themselves constantly hunger for the sacrifice of innocents? You cannot simply brush this aside with the (true) point that Rome also did really bad things. There is a difference between bad acts and bad foundations, as well as between degrees of bad foundations.
This principle should be widely agreed upon—to the point where remarking on it should be obvious and banal. But it isn’t. Although moral relativism may have fallen out of favor with left-wing academic philosophers in recent years, it has sunk deep into the upper strata of our society. The results on the hard left are student groups that think condemning ISIS would be “Islamophobic,” and pundits and scholars who straight-facedly say that Kim Jung-un is no worse (or even a better, cooler-headed leader) than Donald Trump. The president, meanwhile, infamously said on the campaign trail that the United States was no better than Russia because we, too, “have a lot of killers.” And in the mushy, bien pensant middle, the results are a debilitating lack of confidence that our own civilization, despite its often-weighty sins, has wrought change for good in the world.
Of course, you can agree with the principle that certain foundational beliefs can be outside the pale but still insist that the principle be narrowly and carefully applied. There’s a need for caution and prudence: Roman writers and later scholars were aware that the Caesars played up enemy practices like human sacrifice for imperialist propaganda. You can worry about the slippery slope: Human sacrifice—or genocide or slavery—may be condemnable, but is some other practice really as bad as human sacrifice? And the legacy of imperial conquest and racism should make us warier of certain types of conflict than others.
As “clash of civilization” conflicts grow more common—or, more precisely, when internal clashes about what a civilization ought to be, such as that between radical versus moderate Muslims, have immense spillover effects—these worries intensify. But for that exact same reason, it can’t remain fashionable to think that all conceptions of what God wants, or of how a society should be organized, no matter how twisted, are equally valid, or that no one can judge between them.
If we lose track of that, we lose track of what puts us and moderate Syrians, Kurds, etc. on one side of a line and ISIS on the other. In 1831, I’m fairly certain Bellini’s audience would have taken the horrors of paganism for granted and been more struck by the nobility of the Gauls. In 2017, the horror is the more jarring presence in the opera.
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The Met’s Norma is superb. Not only does it have some of the best singers on the planet, plus the invariably excellent Met Orchestra led crisply by Carlo Rizzi, but it’s immensely stylish. The set (Robert Jones), costumes (Moritz Junge), and lighting (Paule Constable) will clearly be identifiable as circa 2017 to viewers in future decades—blue and orange tints predominate in the sky, gray tones in the otherwise traditional armor and cloaks. But it’s a visual spectacle that stands an excellent chance to be around for future decades.
Part of the fun, too, is that it guiltlessly goes full Last of the Mohicans—natives smearing themselves with blood and dancing with swords in forest glens. But it’s Not Problematic, because they’re French.
Nicholas M. Gallagher writes on opera, culture, and politics from New York.