Editing Norma (opera) (section)

== Music ==
[[File:Disegno per copertina di libretto, disegno di Peter Hoffer per Norma (s.d.) - Archivio Storico Ricordi ICON012382.jpg|thumb|Drawing for ''Norma'' (undated)]]
It was [[Giuseppe Verdi]] who—late in his life—made some perceptive comments in a letter of May 1898 to {{ill|Camille Belaigue|fr}}, who had recently published a book on Bellini. In the letter, Verdi states:

<blockquote>Bellini is poor, it is true, in harmony and instrumentation; but rich in feeling and in an individual melancholy of his own! Even in the least well-known of his operas, in ''[[La straniera]]'', in ''[[Il pirata]]'', there are long, long, long melodies such as no-one before him had produced. And what truth and power of declamation, as for example in the duet between Pollione and Norma! [See act 2, scene 3 above. Norma: "In mia man alfin tu sei" / "At last you are in my hands"] And what elation of thought in the first phrase of the introduction [to the duet] ... no-one ever has created another more beautiful and heavenly.<ref>Verdi to Camille Belaigue, 2 May 1898, in {{harvnb|Weinstock|1971|p=279}}</ref></blockquote>

Commenting on the overall quality of the music in ''Norma'', David Kimbell states that "Bellini's most astonishing achievement in ''Norma'' is, amid all the more obvious excitements of musical [[Romanticism]], to have asserted his belief that the true magic of opera depended on a kind of incantation in which dramatic poetry and song are perfectly fused."<ref name=KIMB52>{{harvnb|Kimbell|2001|p=52}}</ref> Additionally, Kimbell provides examples of how the composer's art is revealed in this opera, but also noting that the ability to achieve a "fusion of music and dramatic meaning is to be found elsewhere in Bellini's work".<ref name=KIMB52 />