There are good reasons Bellini’s I Puritani has not been seen at Covent Garden since the early 1990s, but despite the uneven quality of his last opera, most of them revolve around casting. Singers like Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, for whose talents the role of Elvira provided an ideal vehicle, appear once in a lifetime. The star potential of the Cuban–American soprano Lisette Oropesa has long been recognised and this year she has been snapped up by both the Met and the Royal Opera for this formidably demanding role. She does not disappoint. Not only is her coloratura astounding – a fearless command of the stratospheric register coupled with a remarkable range of colour – but in her descent into so-called “madness”, after being apparently jilted on her wedding day, she offers a persuasive and moving psychological portrait of a woman undergoing a crisis of self-esteem.
Conductor Riccardo Frizza is wonderfully responsive to every inflection of her unfolding line, and achieves a fine balance between the moments of pathos and the military robustness of the Civil War setting.
The strife between the eponymous Puritans/Roundheads and the Royalists is given a typically cartoonish twist by Richard Jones in his new production designed by Hyemi Shin. Their take on the shoulder-length curls of the Royalists, combined with sometimes bafflingly conspiratorial behaviour, made one think of Mexican bandits. But the headpieces of Nicky Gillibrand’s exuberantly century-hopping costumes are not a fixed commodity and when the Puritans donned funny helmets, one kept expecting them to burst into A Policeman’s Lot is Not a Happy One.
Yet their little grey books, waved aloft, are a neat reminder of fundamentalist bigotry. And in conjunction with Adam Silverman’s imaginative lighting, some stunning theatrical tableaux are created. Elvira’s lover Arturo reprises his minstrel song in the third act in a snowfall against a black backdrop, poignantly evoking his heartbroken exile. Those for whom the happy conclusion of this tortured drama is unconvincing will not find the unexpected ending Jones supplies objectionable.
The near-impossible technical demands of the role of Arturo are another reason for the work’s neglect. Francesco Demuro was impressively secure at the top – sometimes you couldn’t believe what you were hearing – though the tone is undernourished and his legato needs work. Andrzej Filończyk’s firm Riccardo similarly lacked tonal variety. Ildebrando D’Arcangelo was a powerful Giorgio and Blaise Malaba an outstanding Gualtiero.
To 19 July rbo.org.uk
