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Murder, Madness and Conversion among the Puritans Milano
Cremona (Teatro Amilcare Ponchielli)
12/04/2025 - & November 14, 16 (Como), 20, 22 (Pavia), December 6 (Cremona), 2025
Vincenzo Bellini: I puritani
Maria Laura Iacobellis (Elvira), Gabriele Valsecchi (Lord Gualtiero Valton), Roberto Lorenzi (Sir Giorgio Valton), Valerio Borgioni (Lord Arturo Talbot), Enrico Basso (Sir Bruno Robertson), Sunu Sun (Sir Riccardo Forth), Benedetta Mazzetto (Enrichetta di Francia)
Coro di OperaLombardia, Diego Maccagnola (chorus master), Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano, Sieva Borzak (conductor)
Daniele Menghini (stage director), David Signorini (sets), Nika Campisi (costumes), Gianni Bertoli (lighting)
(© Andrea Butti)
Despite being, according to many aficionados, the greatest bel canto opera ever, I puritani (1835) is today rarely performed due to the difficulty in assembling the required singers. This makes it all the more astounding that Cremona, a city of less than 100,000 inhabitants, would offer such a demanding work. This is possible thanks to OperaLombardia, an association joining creative teams in five cities in the regions of Lombardia, Brescia, Pavia, Cremona, Como and Bergamo. Through this brilliant initiative, these smaller cities, with populations between 100,000 and 250,000, synchronize their productions, using venues of similar capacity, for the common good. It makes financial sense while also offering diverse, otherwise unimaginable artistic choices.
Contrary to popular belief, I puritani is not based on Walter Scott’s Old Morality (1816) but rather on a French play, Têtes rondes et cavaliers (1833), itself derived in part from Sir Walter Scott’s novel. The fact that the latter was translated into Italian as I puritani di Scozia (1825) explains the confusion. The setting of the opera is not Scotland, but Plymouth, in southwest England, circa 1640, when the Civil War pitted Cromwell’s Puritans against the Royalists.
Unlike seven of Bellini’s ten operas, including Il pirata (1827), I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830), La sonnambula (1831) and Norma (1831), the librettist of I puritani was not Felice Romani (1788‑1865) but Carlo Pepoli (1796‑1881), a militant Italian nationalist exile in Paris who eventually became mayor of his native city, Bologna. Bellini unfairly attributed the fiasco of Beatrice di Tenda (1833) to Romani’s libretto and found this new librettist through Rossini. Compared to Romani’s libretti, Pepoli’s is quite weak; the plot is unconvincing and the characters not properly developed. The great success of I puritani is due to its glorious orchestral and vocal writing.
One of the most bewildering aspects of the story is how staunch Puritans allow one of their own to marry Arturo Talbot, an advocate of the Stuarts. This detail made Daniele Menghini’s staging particularly unconvincing. The era has changed from the seventeenth century to the present. Menghini’s Puritans are a sect which venerates tradition of the past and relishes violence. They cherish old paintings including the one by Van Dyck of Queen Henriette Marie de France (1609‑1669), widow of Charles I, though Cromwell had him beheaded. They venerate relics of saints or ancestors in a truly un‑Protestant fashion more reminiscent of some Catholics or even pagans. A black book, possibly their own edition of the bible, seems central to the cult. They constantly brandish it, especially under duress.
An incoherent vision of fundamentalist Christianity held by conventional and moderate believers as well as atheists leads to an unfathomable caricature. A victim from the opposing camp, which in the present day is obviously not the Stuarts and so is possibly an outsider or even a member of the community who broke the rules, is brutally tortured and finally shot dead by Elvira’s uncle, the otherwise kindly Sir Giorgio Valton. The shooting takes place following the famous heroic duet, “Suoni la tromba”.
Some, like Menghini, confuse heroism and conviction with outright barbarism. At the opening, Elvira is brought against her will in a car as if kidnapped and beaten. Oddly, these strange “Puritans” are bons vivants, enjoying wine in abundance, smoking, and, pastry chef in tow, make an elaborate wedding cake. This is a profound confusion about Puritanism, whether in the seventeenth century or the present.
Menghini can be creative, as proved with his recent fantasist staging of L’elisir d’amore in Turin, or even his extravagantly homoerotic Un ballo in maschera in Bussetto. He succeeds in creating an oppressive atmosphere, but the premise of this staging is unconvincing and betrays a muddled vision of what Hilary Clinton once called, to her detriment, “the deplorables”. Even fanatical believers have a logic to their faith; they aren’t simply uneducated psychopaths.
Bellini relished working with the Paris Opéra, which enjoyed the means to hire the very best singers of the time, Giulia Grisi, Giovanni Battista Rubini, Antonio Tamburini and Luigi Lablache. These four legendary voices were henceforth named the “I puritani quartet”, an ensemble that has not since been matched. Amazingly, OperaLombardia has managed to assemble an excellent quartet of singers for their Lombard tournée.
Heard recently as Camille de Rosillon in the Macerata Festival’s The Merry Widow, one could not imagine Valerio Borgioni tackling the most difficult bel canto tenor role in the repertoire. Yet this twenty-seven-year-old tenor did so, and quite brilliantly. Borgioli sang elegantly, with conviction and outstanding diction. Indeed, the surtitles were superfluous for most in the cast, but especially Borgioli, who gave a masterclass in bel canto enunciation and in Bellini’s idiom, which fuses words to music to give a plaintive elegy. Both his Act I “A te o cara” and his Act III “Credeasi misera” were both beautifully sung and moving. His “Vieni tra queste braccia” was transposed down a semi‑tone and he did not even attempt to sing the Act III high F‑natural above C5 in “Credeasi misera”, using either Rubini’s do di petto or in falsetto. As hardly anyone can do the former and the latter is truly unappealing, the choice of Borgioli and the conductor made sense.
Another revelation was the Elvira of Maria Laura Iacobellis, winner of the 2018 Magda Olivero Voice Competition at age twenty‑four. Both Iacobellis and Borgioli exuded youth and innocence, essential attributes for this Romantic opera. This may be the reason Menghini had Arturo offer Elvira a teddy bear in Act III, which led to laughter all around. Endowed with a beautiful timbre and brilliant technique, her Elvira was one of the most appealing I’ve ever heard. Unlike many coloraturas, Iacobellis’s voice is far from a white one; it’s a rich, creamy voice that promises a great future. Like her Arturo, she is blessed with expressivity, both vocal and dramatic. In the pivotal Act II mad scene, “Quì la voce”, she eschewed tired mannerisms many revert to. Despite the muddled staging, one had no choice but to remain transfixed whenever she was onstage.
Hamburg-based South Korean baritone Sunu Sun has a lovely voice that suits bel canto more than Verdi. His diction was not as clear as the other three leads, but he is still quite young. As for the acting, it was rather unsubtle, but certain stagings do limit what is possible.
Bass Roberto Lorenzi made an impression as Elvira’s loving uncle Sir Giorgio Valton, despite certain idiocies in the staging, such as “Suoni la tromba” ending in his murdering a hapless prisoner. Menghini also added two superfluous, silly hidden romances, one between two young people and one between Giorgio and a much younger woman. This did not add to the drama; it only distracted. Endowed with a powerful and velvety instrument, Lorenzi evokes such great Italian basses, such as Ezio Pinza and Cesare Siepi – suave, polished and sensual. I predict a great career in the not‑too‑distant future.
In the secondary roles, mezzo Benedetta Mazzetto portrayed a dignified Queen Enrichetta, thanks to her demeanour and elegant singing. One hopes to hear her in an important role in the coming seasons.
Russian-Italian conductor Sieva Borzak demonstrated a great affinity for bel canto and to Bellini’s elegiac style in particular. He opted for fast tempi and accentuated the score’s dark and violent passages, possibly to suit the director’s vision. Though his decision of imposing several minor cuts, transposing or eliminating some of the tenor’s most difficult lines may annoy purists, it also shows wisdom and a capacity to adapt to circumstances. Only twenty‑eight, one is impatient to hear Borzak in a few years. OperaLombardia seems to have a knack for hiring great artists before they become stars. Their previous casting included Saioa Hernandez and Jessica Pratt, among others, before they became household names.
The most terrible aspect of the staging is the opera’s “happy end”, when Arturo is stripped almost naked and dressed in Puritan garb reminiscent of Rembrandt’s paintings of Dutch merchants. He then kisses the sect’s black book, indicating his own conversion. This is even worse than Laurent Pelly’s disastrous staging for Paris, where Elvira collapses dead at the opera’s happy end.
Ossama el Naggar
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