Günther Heeg

• Brecht equated the practice of historicizing with that of alienating. According to him, the process of historicizing is about letting the present become so alien through the relationship to another time and history that traits, structures, and patterns become visible that would otherwise no longer be perceived in everyday life. For this to succeed, according to Brecht, the present itself must appear historical and temporarally fixed. However, most historical theater productions seem to be far away from this practice of historicization. History has been driven out of its own emotional images in the practice of theatrical historicism. Instead, they create the appearance of ‘vitalization’ and the ‘resurrection’ of history from the dead. Charged as a substitute for religion, these monumental historical images serve as a basis for legitimizing a world disenchanted by metaphysics. Bellini’s operas can become very interesting from this point of view. They not only appear strange in the present but they challenge it by placing it in a strange light. The historical locations of Bellini’s operas are anticipated in the sense of Brecht. These rooms do not evoke distant times but a past that extends into our time and thus refers to the future past of our present. The historical times in “Norma,” “La Sonnambula,” and “I Puritani” are times of transition. Bellini must have experienced various interim periods – between foreign rule and national liberation, between absolutism and democratic participation, between late feudal order and unbridled capitalism – as times of great and fundamental uncertainty. He historicized this experience in his operas. They expose people’s feelings and actions in the space of a pure in-between, which no longer has a reliable origin or a fortuitous outcome. Bellini’s protagonists are exposed to a transitional existence that is held in perpetual suspension.