I puritani program

ACT ONE

Scene 1. As dawn breaks, Bruno Robertson leads the Puritan soldiers in prayer before they set about their duties. Villagers enter in a festive mood and announce that it is Elvira’s wedding day. Sir Riccardo Forth appears, brooding and in despair. Lord Gualtiero Walton has yielded to his daughter Elvira’s wish to marry Lord Arturo Talbot, a royalist opposed to Cromwell and the Puritan cause. Lord Walton has thus broken his promise to Riccardo that Elvira should be his bride. Bruno’s attempts to comfort the rejected suitor are to no avail. Riccardo laments his lost happiness.

Scene 2. Unaware of her father’s change of heart, Elvira has resolved not to go through with the loveless marriage to Riccardo. She learns from her uncle, Sir Giorgio Walton, that the wedding preparations are for her and her beloved Arturo, through her uncle’s intercession. Elvira is overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. Scene 3. The residents of the fortress assemble to greet the bridegroom. Among them is the condemned royal prisoner, Queen Enrichetta. Arturo recognizes her and promises to rescue her. Elvira is filled with a happiness she longs to share with the prisoner; before leaving to prepare for the ceremony, she gives Enrichetta a veil, a present form Arturo. Alone, Arturo recognizes the prisoner as the Queen and promises to rescue her. Arturo convinces her that in his company and disguised as his bride, she will be able to evade the sentries. Their escape is barred by the arrival of Riccardo, who challenges Arturo to a duel for stealing Elvira’s affections from him. Enrichetta places herself between them and, in the confusion, her identity is revealed. Riccardo offers no further hindrance to their departure, knowing that Arturo’s treason will prevent his ever marrying Elvira. She and the other Puritans return to the courtyard; in the distance, they can see the fugitives riding away, leaving Elvira distraught.

ACT TWO

Giorgio describes to the Puritans the madness that has overcome Elvira, who believes that Arturo has abandoned her for another woman. Riccardo appears with a proclamation naming him leader of Cromwell’s forces and ordering him to capture and execute Arturo. A disheveled Elvira appears. Her confused mind darts from the reality of Arturo’s departure to the delusion that he has never left. Giorgio begs Riccardo to save his rival’s life for Elvira’s sake. Riccardo agrees to spare him if he returns alone and defenseless, but if he returns armed and with military escort, the rebel will be crushed. Giorgio declares that he will join Riccardo in battle if England is attacked.

ACT THREE

Pursued by Cromwell’s troops, Arturo approaches the fortress hoping desperately to see Elvira once more. The lovers are soon joyfully reunited. Arturo refuses to leave Elvira, despite his personal danger. The troops come upon them and seize Arturo. A sentence of death is about to be carried out, which shocks Elvira and restores her reason. Suddenly a messenger arrives with the news of Cromwell’s victory and the pardon of all prisoners, leaving the way clear for Arturo and Elvira to marry.

How does the piece connect with a modern audience?

This piece is set during the English Civil War, when those loyal to the crown were at war with those backing Parliament. Much like our own Civil War, the conflict permeated deep into the daily lives of ordinary people, and came between loved ones. I puritani centers on a family (Lord Walton and his daughter Elvira) that is stuck in this divided world where their allegiances are on one side, and Arturo, Elvira’s boyfriend, is on the other. The opera keenly presents a situation with people questioning allegiance, or trying to balance their personal beliefs and their ideologies. Nowadays, I think that is particularly resonant; you get, among families and friends, people with vastly different ideologies about so many different things. How does that impact the way we feel about the people we're interacting with, who have professed opposite beliefs? Are we able to separate the person from some (or all) of their beliefs? These are incredibly modern questions that can act as gateways to this beautiful opera.

Can you talk about the conflict that is at the heart of the work?

I puritani opens with Elvira’s father granting her permission to marry somebody from the opposing faction. This is a remarkable bit of drama, seeing as there have been countless operas centered around the very conflict of papa not letting daughter marry someone from the “other side.” Romeo and Juliet, of course, is an obvious example. Giorgio, Elvira’s uncle, is able to persuade Gualtiero, Elvira’s father, that because Elvira is so miserable, wanting only to be with her beloved Arturo, he must give her permission – and he does. It’s extraordinary that the opera starts that way! So Bellini is already giving us a picture of these people that we’re not expecting. It opens the door to incredibly three-dimensional characters. Despite the opera’s solid bel canto form, these are people with robust and complicated emotional lives. The real conflict that arises is created by Arturo, and it literally drives Elvira crazy

There’s a difficult choice facing Arturo, our tenor.

The opera begins with Elvira’s father granting his daughter permission to marry Arturo, and it seems like the couple, despite being from opposing sides of the Civil War, will live happily ever after. Their wedding has the power to bring together the supporters of Parliament and the Royalists. Unfortunately, not long after this happy news, Arturo is forced to choose between his allegiance to the crown and his love for Elvira. In the interest of good theater, Bellini has Arturo choose against Elvira: he saves Queen Enrichetta, rather than be true to his beloved. Once again, the opera deals with a timeless conflict through Arturo: that of the struggle between something outside of ourselves (be it country or profession) and something inside ourselves (love or family connection).

As a director, how do you create visual interest in this piece?

For me, it’s always about text and character and music. It’s also about really digging into each scene as if they were, on the surface, as dramatically rich as Puccini, Verdi, or even a 20th-century playwright. Within Bellini’s beautiful score are scenes that are rich, muscular, and complicated. While yes, historically an opera like I puritani has been about focusing on and featuring the voice, what’s exciting about this cast is that they’re all artists who want to dig into the scene beyond beautiful vocalism - to know why a musical phrase is repeated or why a certain text or musical change occurs and, most importantly, how can the drama influence the vocalism.

There’s a fascinating amount of text variation as the piece goes on, especially in large ensemble scenes. In many bel canto operas, the text of the soloists and chorus are the same. One of the most remarkable things in I puritani is the ensemble writing – in most large scenes, everyone (even within the chorus) is saying something different. This textual variety creates an amazingly three-dimensional world where everyone is reacting differently to the situation, as is truly human nature. All of this text difference is not always something that can be as clearly illustrated to the audience as it would be if you were looking at a score, but I believe that the variety of reactions and intentions will create a visceral and honest world on stage that has the potential to be incredibly gripping.

All of us attending this performance are here because we appreciate great singing. The singing voice in opera carries with it emotions that tug at our hearts, drawing us to the opera’s characters and into the situations that shape their lives. It can ravish us through sheer beauty of sound, but also stagger us through its technical virtuosity, leaving us in awe of the singer’s courage and accomplishment. What makes the voice the most expressive as well as the most exhilarating of all instruments will be very much in evidence when you experience Vincenzo Bellini’s I puritani.

We don’t hear this opera in live performances as frequently as a number of other bel canto works, but it certainly is one of this repertoire’s greatest masterpieces. I’ve always treasured I puritani for the glorious opportunities it offers the principal artists, especially the leading tenor and soprano. You need only listen to Arturo’s soaring entrance aria or Elvira’s heartrending mad scene to realize how extraordinarily elegant and expressive Bellini melodies can be. More than perhaps any other work, it’s I puritani that is most often described as “the essence of bel canto.”

The vocal demands of this opera are such that no company can consider producing it without four stupendously gifted principal artists. Thus it is particularly exhilarating for me to welcome back to Lyric the wonderful quartet who will be performing it here this season.

Having believed very strongly in the talent of Albina Shagimuratova since the earliest days of her career, I introduced her to Lyric audiences five seasons ago. I’m thrilled that she’s following her successes here as Gilda and Lucia with her role debut as Bellini’s poignant Elvira. Like Albina, Lawrence Brownlee has won international acclaim in the bel canto repertoire. He is widely regarded as today’s preeminent interpreter of the high-flying role of Arturo. Ryan Opera Center alumnus Anthony Clark Evans, now launched on what is clearly going to be an outstanding career, is our Riccardo, and Adrian Sâmpetrean, who debuted here last season as a memorably warm-voiced Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, is back with us to portray Giorgio.

I’m pleased to welcome again to Lyric for this production Enrique Mazzola, who was on the podium for our memorable Lucia last season. Enrique is a born bel canto interpreter. His instinctive grasp of the style has brought him tremendous praise at Glyndebourne and major houses from Paris and Zurich to Berlin and Moscow.

Elsewhere in this program, you’ll read about the remarkable artists who created the leading roles in this opera and became universally known as the “Puritani quartet.” More than 140 years later, at the Metropolitan Opera, another illustrious quartet – Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Sherrill Milnes, and James Morris – premiered the production you’re seeing at Lyric this season. Those artists created a new standard for this opera and carried forward the finest traditions of Bellini performances. After you hear our Puritani, I know you’ll agree with me that our artists this season are doing the same.

Anthony Freud
General Director, President & CEO
The Women’s Board Endowed Chair

Vincenzo Bellini became famous for what one of his greatest admirers, Richard Wagner, called “endless melody.” The music of Bellini has stood the test of time, with singers and audiences rejoicing in his melodies’ beauty, grace, and sheer soulfulness.

Bellini’s operas supremely exemplify the bel canto style – the deployment of a beautiful voice exhibiting the utmost elegance and technical finish, with that voice invariably used for eloquent expressive purposes. This was one composer who knew how to let a voice bloom. He wrote for singers, not against them; their sound and their musicality mattered deeply to him. At the same time, he understood the power of beautiful singing to communicate feeling. In fact, he wrote to the operatically inexperienced librettist of I puritani, “Engrave on your mind in indelible letters: in opera, it is the singing that moves to tears, that arouses terror, that inspires death.”

Most of Bellini's operatic output falls within the genre of romantic tragedy, but (miracle of miracles!) no one dies in I puritani – it actually has a happy ending. Still, like Bellini’s other operas, this one is about great singing, above all. And this composer’s incomparable gift for vocal writing (especially his ability to combine elegance with moments of dazzling virtuosity) was never more evident than in I puritani.

Bellini’s pitifully short life began in 1801, in Catania, Sicily (Wagner, atypically and – given what we know of Bellini’s temperament – not exactly accurately, called him “that gentle Sicilian”). Son of an organist, he was a musical prodigy, already composing at age six. At the college where he studied in Naples, he produced many pieces, including his first opera, Adelson e Salvini, premiered by students. Fortunately, in the audience was the most powerful figure in Italian opera at the time, Domenico Barbaia, manager of Naples’s Teatro San Carlo. Deeply impressed, he commissioned Bellini for his first professionally produced opera, Bianca e Gernando, first heard at the San Carlo in 1826.

Bellini was an incorrigibly self-absorbed character. Exceedingly ambitious, he was convinced (not without reason, given his extraordinary talent) that of all Italian theaters, it was at Milan’s prestigious La Scala that he truly belonged. Barbaia was running that house as well, and he offered Bellini a commission. That opera, Il pirata in 1827, proved an immense success. Six other works followed in Italian houses over the next seven years, among them two gems of bel canto, La sonnambula and Norma.

Paris being the true mainspring of operatic activity in Europe at the time, it was inevitable that Bellini would eventually move there. He easily established himself within the elite of the city’s musical and literary scene. When not indulging in suspicion and petty jealousies, he could really turn on the charm. His irresistible handsomeness also didn’t hurt as he proceeded to make all sorts of important connections.

Paris being the true mainspring of operatic activity in Europe at the time, it was inevitable that Bellini would eventually move there. He easily established himself within the elite of the city’s musical and literary scene. When not indulging in suspicion and petty jealousies, he could really turn on the charm. His irresistible handsomeness also didn’t hurt as he proceeded to make all sorts of important connections.

In early 1834 Bellini signed a contract for a new opera, working now with a new librettist, Count Carlo Pepoli, a poet who had written nothing in theater or opera before. The work, I puritani, had been commissioned by Paris’s Théâtre Italien, where Gioachino Rossini – his days of composing opera now behind him – was acting as artistic director.

This was a hugely important venue in the promotion of Italian opera. For example, the Bellini opera hadn’t even been premiered when Bellini heard, to his horror, that his rival, Gaetano Donizetti, would be composing a new work for the Théâtre Italien the following year. Bellini, who felt considerable jealousy towards fellow composers, wrote a letter to his uncle that seems almost paranoiac: "I had a fever for three days, as I became aware of the plot actually being prepared against me. Rossini decided to have Donizetti commissioned also, because in that way – set up against me – he would suffocate me, exterminate me, with the support of Rossini’s colossal influence."

Rehearsals began in December, and the new opera, I puritani, was introduced at the Théâtre Italien on January 24, 1835, scoring one of the greatest triumphs of Bellini’s career. The premiere was actually attended by Donizetti who, being invariably a humble, generous human being, wrote to a colleague, “I don’t deserve anything like the success of I puritani.”

Within two months of the final performance of that original run, the four stupendous singers who had premiered the opera – and who came to be known collectively as the “Puritani Quartet” – were singing it in London, where it created a sensation. Once the youthful Princess Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, the very first concert she arranged at Buckingham Palace included an appearance by the quartet (she also had singing lessons with the quartet’s bass member, Luigi Lablache). She adored this opera, and in the coming years, as England’s music-loving queen, she referred to it as “our dear Puritani”!

Bellini was deep into planning new projects when he fell ill in September of 1835. He died shortly thereafter of what was apparently a severe intestinal inflammation, a few weeks shy of his 34th birthday. At his funeral, three of the four members of the “Puritani Quartet” were in attendance; the “Lacrimosa” section of the Requiem Mass was sung to the melody of the nobly beautiful tenor aria that graces the opera’s final scene.

The Puritani plot has as its source a somewhat musty historical drama of 1828 called Têtes rondes et cavaliers (Roundheads and Cavaliers), by two exceedingly successful Paris playwrights, Jacques-François Ancelot and Xavier Boniface Saintine. The pair, in turn, had very loosely based their play on a novel from 12 years before by Sir Walter Scott, Old Mortality. February 4 - 28, 2018 | 31  The famous triple portrait of King Charles I, painted by Sir Anthony van Dyck, ca. 1637); Oliver Cromwell at Marston Moor, one of the significant battles of the First English Civil War, painted by Abraham Cooper (1767-1868); the wife of Charles I, Queen Henrietta Maria (“Enrichetta” in the Puritani libretto), painted by an unknown artist with background by Hendrick van Steenwyck, ca. 1635. The novel takes place in Scotland, and its title has frequently been referred to in Italian translation as I puritani di Scozia (The Puritans of Scotland). That title for decades was, oddly, applied to Bellini’s opera, which has nothing to do with Scotland.

We hear from the soprano Elvira, our heroine, only very briefly – and from offstage – in the first scene. The next scene, which comprises a duet for her and her uncle Giorgio (bass), begins with the girl’s declaration that if she’s dragged to the altar to marry her betrothed, Riccardo, she’ll die of grief. She expresses this in flights of extravagant florid singing, giving a clear indication that she’s quite an emotional young woman! We see her in a much more joyous frame of mind later in Act One, once she’s set to marry the Puritan Riccardo’s enemy, the Royalist Arturo. Bellini emphasizes Elvira’s ebullience with his brilliant decision to use the buoyant rhythms of a polonaise as the basis for her aria, “Son vergin vezzosa in vesta di sposa” (“I’m a girl dressed as a bride”).

Everything changes for Elvira mere minutes later when, seeing Arturo leaving the fortress with a veiled woman, she assumes he’s being unfaithful – she loses her reason while singing the most sublime Bellini legato. That continues into Act Two, where the composer gives his heroine a particularly celebrated mad scene. It’s a genuine touchstone – music against which virtually all aspiring bel canto sopranos have measured themselves. On the other hand, it’s also a moment of such devastating melancholy that in performance it often brings tears to the eyes of many listeners.

Yes, it’s a mad scene, but rather more restrained dramatically than the one Donizetti composed for Lucia di Lammermoor. The initial aria of despair is followed by a hopeful (and more vocally glittering) second aria, in which Elvira begs the absent Arturo to return to her. “My darling,” she sings, “come back to love!” The sequence of descending scales on the word “amore” is the toughest moment vocally – but also the most exhilarating moment – anywhere in Elvira’s music, written to do justice to the extraordinary instrument of the role’s creator, Giulia Grisi, a sort of “super-soprano.”

Grisi was one singer who really could sing anything – she had technique to burn! Like her successor more than a century later, Dame Joan Sutherland, Grisi could bounce from light to heavy roles effortlessly; she knew exactly how to produce a certain girlishness in her sound, which she would have needed for much of Elvira’s music. She could also plumb the depths of emotion, as in the duet with Arturo in Act Three: in a very moving passage, Elvira asks her beloved how long it’s been since he went away – “Three months,” he replies. “No, no,” says Elvira sadly, “it was three centuries of sighing and torment – three centuries of horror!” However simple this vocal line may be, a sensitive interpreter can draw a flood of emotion from it.

Elvira’s beloved Arturo makes his first entrance with one of the most soaring of all Bellini tenor arias, and possibly the loveliest moment musically in his entire role, “A te, o cara” (“To you, oh, dear one”). The singer can sculpt this music as if working in the finest marble. It must have been miraculous in the voice of the first Arturo, Giovanni Battista Rubini, one of the greatest glories of the bel canto era. He wasn’t glamorous and apparently didn’t impress at all as a stage personality, but he was vocally and musically beyond compare, his singing wide-ranging, matchlessly graceful, and totally effortless.

Later in Act One, after a brief but vocally aggressive confrontation with Riccardo, Arturo leaves the vocal glory to his colleagues, staying offstage for all of Act Two. In the final act he returns to take the stage, first in a ravishing song of longing for Elvira, then in their lengthy duet. The latter’s final section presents a declaration of the couple’s joy in loving each other. It’s assertive music and it communicates utter confidence (as in the couple’s jump to a unison high C). Once Arturo is captured, all eyes are on him as he sings “Credeasi, misera! da me tradita” (“The poor girl believed I betrayed her), declaring that he can face heaven’s anger if he can die with Elvira beside him. This is Arturo’s toughest music, another glorious Bellini legato line but moving progressively higher as it proceeds. For Rubini, the first Arturo, Bellini actually wrote the climax with an F above high C, a note encountered very few times anywhere in the entire history of tenor repertoire.

In Bellini operas, the romantic pair generally gets the lion’s share of attention, but I puritani is different – the baritone and bass have substantial opportunities, too. Riccardo begins the opera lamenting that he’s lost Elvira, expressing that misery in a cavatina – that is, an aria emphasizing an easily flowing line and the ultimate in graceful phrasing, absolutely typical of bel canto in general and exemplified to perfection by Bellini. When urged to devote his energy to leading the Puritans in battle, Riccardo can’t get Elvira out of his mind, and declares as much in his cabaletta. This is another wonderful convention of bel canto opera (we hear it in Elvira’s mad scene, and we recognize it later in much of the Verdi repertoire). This follow-up aria is generally livelier in tempo and sometimes – although not in Riccardo’s case – more elaborate vocally than the cavatina. The first Riccardo, Antonio Tamburini, the bel canto era’s only superstar baritone, sang flawlessly and, unlike many of his ilk, was both impressive to behold and an outstanding actor. We can easily imagine how magnificently he embodied the role We hear from Giorgio, the opera’s principal bass, not just in the big duet with his niece Elvira, but at the opening of Act Two, in his aria sadly describing how distracted the poor girl has become. In contrast to the dashing Tamburini, Giorgio was created by the famously rotund Luigi Lablache, another Italian with a large, beautiful, agile voice and a vivid presence (often employed in comic roles). Bellini gives his Act-Two finale to the bass and baritone, a combination of voices quite rare in bel canto and not what one would necessarily have expected of this composer. He rose to the challenge, however, with the only passage in I puritani for which the description “elementally exciting” would be appropriate. This is Giorgio telling Riccardo that if he doesn’t do all he can to save Arturo’s life, the ghosts of both Elvira and Arturo will haunt him forever. Having been reduced to tears, Riccardo now agrees. They anticipate a battle between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers – “Let the words ‘country,' ‘victory,' and ‘honor’ awaken terror in the enemy,” sings Giorgio, and that leads into their call to arms. Along with Elvira’s mad scene, “Suoni la tromba” (“Sound the trumpet”) is by far the most popular number in this score – a moment that keeps audiences returning to the music of I puritani over and over again.

Some critics have felt that the poetic romantic drama of La sonnambula suited Bellini better than the historical drama of I puritani. He was a huge admirer of Rossini’s monumental Guillaume Tell, reportedly seeing it more than 30 times. Had he lived, no doubt he would have moved into a more dramatic, grander-scale mode of writing, but it wasn’t to be. Let’s be grateful for what we have – a score that captivates the ear. As the composer Arrigo Boito said, “Whoever doesn’t love Bellini doesn’t love music.”

Roger Pines, Lyric’s dramaturg and broadcast co-host/coproducer, regularly contributes writing to opera-related publications and recording companies internationally. He also has appeared annually since 2006 on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts’ Opera Quiz.