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." 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"