Oswald also served as stage director. Just as he did with Verdi's Nabucco for Baltimore Opera a couple of years ago, he settled for unimaginative routine, including the same tired approach to scenes involving choristers - they enter stage left and stage right, find their "x" on the floor, assume the stand-still oratorio position, occasionally raise one hand in unison when the music gets a little heated, then shuffle back off the way they entered.
That sort of thing might have been good enough in 1831, when Norma was premiered at La Scala, but it looks pathetic today. Although Oswald was marginally better in his approach to the principal characters, they, too, could have used more inspired guidance.
In the end, though, the musical strengths in this production carry the day and help to reaffirm how nobly Norma provides aural proof of what Keats discerned in that Grecian urn: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." There are two more performances left. That is all ye need to know.
