These days, Vienna-based soprano Hasmik Papian is the go-to Norma, a truly operatic role that’s had many legendary names associated with it.

When Vancouver Opera opens its season with Norma, soprano Hasmik Papian will sing the title role she’s played around the world

Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma is widely considered the bel canto opera of all time, and the title role is one of the greatest for a lyric-dramatic soprano. It hits the Queen Elizabeth Theatre stage on Saturday (November 28), in a season-opening production by Vancouver Opera.

This is a high-water mark for a company now celebrating its 50th anniversary. It was in 1963 that the Australian conductor Richard Bonynge introduced Norma to Vancouver Opera, with his wife, the great soprano Joan Sutherland, in the lead, and another legend, Marilyn Horne, as Adalgisa. In modern times, Sutherland has more or less defined the part, though Maria Callas has an equal share in the claim.

Bonynge is back to conduct the current production of a work that launched his international career. He’s seen as the person to go to for bel canto opera, and has conducted more than 120 performances of Norma.

And these days, soprano Hasmik Papian is the go-to Norma, having sung the role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York—and all over the world—to very high acclaim. She lives in Vienna with her husband, who is a dramaturge for Zurich Opera, and her eight-year-old daughter. If she hadn’t gone into singing as a profession, she would have become a violinist, with a particular admiration for Zino Francescatti.

I talk by telephone with the Armenian-born Papian, who speaks impeccable English, at her Vancouver hotel, where she’s resting between rehearsals. Asked whether she’s found it daunting to undertake a role that Sutherland virtually carved out, and with the very conductor who has practically defined the opera, she says this is her first time working with Bonynge, but that she’s “always open to learning new things, and it’s been going very well.

“There’s been no pressure—yet,” she adds with a chuckle.

Her first time singing Norma at the Met was in 2007. “It was not a beautiful production—it was a revival from 2000—and the stage was very open, which didn’t help,” she says. “I was stepping in for Deborah Voigt, who cancelled.” The critics didn’t like it, she recalls, pointing out the New York Times review in particular, “but the public went crazy. I sang very well. But I think the critics were expecting someone more established.”

Over its long history, Norma has had a few less-than-generous things said about its plot—as if opera should be credible—but nobody has ever said a word against its music. Even Richard Wagner adored Norma. And I doubt there would be a problem with its plot, either, if the parts were well-sung, because the story unfolds into a kind of inevitability. The opera grows into the plot, reaching an apocalyptic final scene that is, in a good production, intensely moving.

To put the story briefly, Rome has invaded Gaul, until then ruled by druids. Gaul’s high priestess, Norma, has had two illegitimate children by Pollione, the Roman proconsul, who has fallen out of love with her and is now fixing his eye on the minor druidic acolyte Adalgisa. The story deals with Norma’s chaste fury, Adalgisa’s tender morality, and Pollione’s last-minute change of heart as he fully realizes Norma’s great spiritual stature and joins her on her funeral pyre.

Norma has been a repertory mainstay ever since it was first produced at Milan’s La Scala, in 1831. It would be as inconceivable without a superb singer to play the title character as a Götterdämmerung would be with an inadequate Brunhild, or a Carmen without a stellar Carmen (and we’ve had a few of those). It calls not only for a great voice but for the greatest of acting skills. The role has many legendary names associated with it: Giulia Grisi, Maria Malibran, Lilli Lehmann, Rosa Ponselle, all the way up to Callas, Montserrat Caballé, and, of course, Sutherland.

Papian has followed as much as can be learned of the early great sopranos and the way they approached Norma, but certain unique aspects of the era when the piece was first performed still present the singer with challenges.

“Opera was very different in those times,” she says. “The orchestras were different, playing at another pitch, and the opera houses were smaller, and of course the audiences were fundamentally different, there being no Internet, movies, television, et cetera. The opera house was the place to show up. We’re living in totally different times. There’s only so much we can know about how different the times were. We can only imagine.”

Norma continues on December 1, 3, and 5 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. The leading tenor Richard Margison, who comes fresh from singing Radamès in the Met’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, takes the part of Pollione. Papian has performed twice before with Margison, including in Aida at the Met. “It’s wonderful working with him,” she says.

The production also features the internationally praised mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich as Adalgisa, and bass Alain Coulombe as Oroveso.