“Norma”, the dish including pasta, tomato sauce, eggplant, basil and salted cottage cheese, is a cuisine success. But there is another Norma, an opera work by Vincenzo Bellini, that hasn’t had the same appraisal on occasion of its first representation. When it first debuted at the Teatro alla Scala theater in Milan, the public considered it a fiasco; but a plate of pasta overturned the opera’s reviews.
In front of the macaroni with steaming fried eggplant, a plate known to have birth the day of the premiere at the once Teatro Massimo in Catania, the writer Nino Martoglio remained so enchanted that, comparing it to Bellini’s masterpiece, he stated: “This is a real Norma!”
Both the recipe and the opera became two institutions, to savor either at the restaurant or at the museum of the Massimo Theater, now dedicated to the local composer.
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