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.
