Zachary Woolfe Sees the Met's "Norma" From 9 Perspectives The Met's "Norma," seen from a Parterre box. A little over a month ago, I was up in the Balcony section of the Metropolitan Opera watching a performance of Bellini's "Norma." It's not a part of the Met I spend much time in anymore, but when I was young, I sat for many nights in my favorite spot at the center of the balcony's front row. From up there, I would feel like the captain at the bow of a ship, the empty space of the theater sprawling out beneath me, and the proscenium looming fearsomely high ahead. My parents didn't particularly like opera, so at the end of the performances, my father would be waiting in the car on 65th Street for the drive back to Long Island. I loved leaving the theater almost as much as the opera itself, because it meant I got to skip down the corkscrew stairs from the upper levels. I don't mean the grand, exposed main staircase in the lobby, but the red-velvet-lined ones on either side of the house, cozily cryptlike. I'd race down after the performances, accelerating as I passed the Dress Circle and Grand Tier, running my hand against the soft walls in the dim light before emerging into the cold. That feeling of worn velvet is as much a part of my memories as any of the singers I heard. But I no longer climb up and down those stairs with any frequency, because I don't often end up in the Met's upper tiers. The seats for reviewers from The New York Times are in the orchestra: Row L, Seats 1 and 3; come say hi! While this is, of course, a great privilege, I got it in mind to see what things were like up in my old stamping grounds, and perhaps to experience parts of the Met I'd never explored. What do different angles bring to watching an opera? Answering this question became the bedfellow of another idea I'd had: to see how an opera changes - and doesn't - over the course of a run. Does it matter which performance of a given opera you see? That's a question that haunts me as a critic who generally gets a single shot before rendering judgment. Without a previews period, opera singers, unlike actors, are essentially shoved in front of the spotlight. I wanted to see if this system shortchanged the artists I was reviewing. And so it was that on a recent Friday evening, I found myself watching my ninth performance of "Norma" in just over a month. This season's run of Bellini's masterpiece, conducted by Riccardo Frizza, fit my logistical bill: long enough to get a decent sampling but concentrated in a single period. There was also the built-in drama of a cast change. The run began with six more or less impressive, if safe, performances with the first-night cast, including the veteran soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role of a Druid priestess, and the mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich as Adalgisa, her acolyte turned romantic competition. This was followed by two unexpectedly thrilling evenings featuring a pair of rising singers, the soprano Angela Meade and the mezzo Jamie Barton. Ms. Radvanovsky and Ms. Aldrich returned, for good measure, for the final performance. I don't want to exaggerate the challenge my project posed, but neither would I like to underestimate it. While "Norma" isn't the longest work, it's no slouch, and nine is never a small number when it comes to opera. In what I came to call my Month of Living Normally - from the Sept. 30 premiere to the final performance on Nov. 1 - I spent about 30 hours at the Met watching the opera from nine different vantage points, a "Ring" cycle and a half. My marathon wasn't made easier by the Met's production, originally directed in 2001 by John Copley, which grew more mystifying with each performance and from each new angle. John Conklin's set is strewn with a few Stonehenge-like rocks; enormous James Turrell-ish circles of light alternately dilate and constrict in the background. Ms. Radvanovsky was burdened with a risibly glittering blue gown, on whose train she tripped and fell during the fifth performance. The chorus, so crucial to Bellini's vision of a drama that confronts the political with the personal, was moved around in awkward, uninspired formations. It was not a show that revealed new depths nine times over.