Composed by Vincenzo Bellini in 1835 with librettist Count Pepoli.
I Puritani was staged by the New York Metropolitan Opera at a Saturday matinee on January 6, 2007. This was a special performance because it was broadcast live, in Italian with English subtitles, to movie theaters around the world and recorded in high-definition video.
I am Henry C. McFadyen, Jr., CV0, a novice opera fan. I have been privileged to see the Met January 6, 2007 I Puritani in fourdifferent versions, and I review them all here:
Elvira: daughter of Lord Walton, a Puritan, sung by soprano Anna Netrebko
Arturo: a royalist officer, or Cavalier, sung by tenor Eric Cutler
Riccardo: a Puritan officer who loves Elvira, sung by baritone Franco Vassallo
Lord Walton: Elvira's father, who has promised her to Riccardo, sung by bass Valerain Ruminski
Giorgio: Walton's brother and Elvira's uncle, sung by bass John Relyea
Bruno: a Puritan officer and friend of Riccardo, sung by tenor Eduardo Valdes
Enrichetta: the widow of the recently-be-headed king, Charles I, sung by soprano Maria Zifchak
Chorus under Raymond Hughes
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Set: Ming Cho Lee.
Costumes: Peter J. Hall
The plot is Romeo and Juliet, but with a happy ending. The setting is about 1650 in England. The Puritans, followers of Oliver Cromwell, are pursuing the English Revolution with Parliament pitted against the royal family. Elvira is the daughter of Lord Walton, a Puritan. She is supposed to marry Riccardo, a Puritan colonel. But you guessed it--she's in love with Arturo, a Cavalier and supporter of the royal family. (I will use the Italian names as sung in the opera.)
The Puritans and Royalists are playing for keeps, and King Charles I has just had his head cut off. Elvira's love for Arturo is not politically correct, and her father expects Elvira to accept Riccardo as husband. But Uncle Giorgio pleads for Elvira's happiness, and Lord Walton relents: Elvira can marry Arturo!
Arturo crosses enemy lines for the wedding at the Puritan fortress. Well, it seems security at the fortress is a bit lax--Enrichetta, the imprisoned widow of King Charles and reigning Queen, is wandering around the grounds and mingling with the crowd when Elvira greets her Arturo. Elvira retires to dress for the wedding. Arturo discovers the presence of the Queen and realizes that she is in mortal danger. What a conflict of interest for poor Arturo. Should he save his girl or save the State!
Arturo's duty is clear: he must help the Queen escape, even at cost of losing Elvira. As Arturo and the Queen are sneaking out of the fort, Riccardo suddenly appears. Now he's got the conflict: does Riccardo save the Revolution or make another try at the girl? He goes for the girl and allows the Queen and Arturo to slip away (with a gesture of good riddance).
Soon Elvira arrives for the wedding and finds the place in chaos--it seems her groom has used her wedding as a pretext to break the Queen out of jail and maybe destroy the Revolution and her family! As Act I closes, we see that Elvira has gone mad, and she will stay that way for most of the rest of the opera.
Act II consists of two famous scenes. The first is Elvira's glorious and pathetic mad scene. After that Uncle Giorgio and spurned suitor Riccardo join forces in a rousing patriotic war duet `` Suoni la tromba'' (Sound the Trumpet).
In Shakespeare, this scenario would produce in Act III a cord of corpses. But in this bel canto opera, nobody is going to die. Arturo, although marked for death as a traitor, comes back to prove his love for Elvira. They meet and Elvira regains her sanity. Arturo is arrested and is headed for the chopping block.
Now it's time for Riccardo to show his gallantly. Prodded by Elvira's uncle, Riccardo acknowledges his complicity in the Queen's escape and his guilt in contributing to Elvira's predicament. He undertakes to save his rival in order to protect Elvira from further madness. Still, his efforts fail and Arturo is condemned to death. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, so I'll not tell you what happens to straighten all this out. Still I promise that everybody winds up happy except possibly Riccardo. (He does recover his honor, and I'm pretty sure he will find another lady.)
Logically, this plot has more holes than the last socks I threw out. Artistically, the plot is polished driftwood. With the help of the excellent subtitles provided by the Met, I was able to follow easily everything that was happening.
I Puritani is an opera in the bel canto (``beautiful song'') style. One would think that all operas would by definition be about beautiful song. But operas have many elements (in addition to the singing) including the orchestral score, a plot, dramatic acting, scenery, costumes, lighting, dancing, and sometimes even a political agenda.
I Puritani has all these elements to some decree, and all are nicely done. But everything is subservient to one goal: to cram in as many beautiful songs as possible. Somebody is singing all the time. There is no spoken word or harpsichord filler to give the singers a break. The composer writes the songs at the limit of what what the human voice can do--while always projecting an aura of utmost decorum, propriety, and elevation of taste.
I don't think Bellini and Pepoli were much interested in the complicated history of the time of the English Revolution. Sure, the civil war provides a framework for the drama of characters caught between love and duty. But I think the composer used the name I Puritani as a metaphor for the dream world he creates: a world elevated by beautiful song to a nirvana of purity, goodness, and beauty. This is a world with no poverty, wealth, ugliness, hate, violence, death, greed, sex, or even humor or need for humor. Yes, there's a revolution and war going on, but not in our fortress. Here everybody is noble, righteous, and brave.
The only weakness shown by anyone is Riccardo's betrayal of his duty out of longing for the girl he cannot have. In this elysian world of pure goodness, such a small fault has catastrophic consequences for fragile Elvira. But even Riccardo will in time nobly redeem himself. In I Puritani everybody and everything is pure or will be purified--from this world no one goes to Hell and there is no need for Heaven. It's a blithe way to spend three hours.
Elvira is the only significant female role in this opera, and she is on the stage much of the time. Her role is so demanding that the opera is rarely produced for lack of ladies who can sing it. It takes four men to counter-balance Elvira's presence: her father, her uncle, and her two suitors. But these roles have a lot of substance and together provide a satisfying counterweight to the single refulgent presence of Elvira.
The Met revived I Puritani for Anna Netrebko, a Russian soprano who, they say, is the first woman to appear in recent years who can sign Elvira. She is stupendous because, in addition to being able to sing the part, she actually looks (at age 35) like a young bride. And surely it's not fair, but still must be said, that she is also movie-star beautiful. Finally, she is an athlete. I had a hunch. Yes indeed, her official web-site states that one of her early successes was in gymnastics! This you can see in her stage movements. I count at least 5 actions by her on the stage that, I suspect, would likely not have been attempted by many (or any) of the past Elviras and will not be attempted by those of the future.
Netrebko is frequently put these days into the same sentence with past luminaries like Callas, Sutherland, and Sills. Only experts could discuss how Netrebko's singing and acting compares to these fabled stars. But I suspect that the Netrebko package in HDVD format sets the bar for the future for all but the most erudite fans.
According to Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times, both Relyea (uncle Giorgio) and Cutler (swain Arturo) and were sick when the Met premiered late in December, 2006. But I think all the men were in good form for the HDTV shoot. And there's plenty of great singing opportunities for them. Giorgio was appropriately virile and avuncular. Arturo seemed quite romantic to me, although as a man, I'm a poor judge of this.
Vassallo as Riccardo was criticized by Tommasini as dull, but I saw it differently on January 6. Psychologically and morally, Riccardo is the most difficult role in this opera. (Elvira just goes crazy; Riccardo has to earn redemption.) I'd be dull too if my gal was going to marry my arch-enemy. Later Vassallo gets to show his mettle in the famous patriot duet with Giorgio. (Hmm ...a purification ritual! If you get dumped by your girl you can always join the Army.)
The chorus gets quite a bit to do. In a perfect world, there must always be a song in the air and the stars need at least some breathing room. This was provided by the chorus in pleasing proportion.
I don't remember much about the orchestra score except that there's a lot of work for the French horns. I think this is a high compliment to the folks in the pit. The bel canto orchestra is small and not a juggernaut as in later operas of the Wagner era. When the orchestra is bad, this will be noted for sure. When the orchestra is unnoticed, it's a smashing success.
According to several reviews I saw, the sets, the costumes, and the lighting used by the Met were taken out of moth balls from decades ago. Some view this as dated, but I loved it all. I don't want to see I Puritani set on a spaceship.
My Tinseltown introduction to I Puritani is worth relating in some detail. The mere idea was disorienting: live opera at the same venue where I just could have seen at mid-night The Texas Chain Saw Torture Chamber. First I drove on the windswept Interstate highway past all the fast-food joints and humongous category-killing retail stores. I entered the vast lifeless lot with its cracked asphalt parking surfaces and paper cups blowing about. Then I approached and entered the ugliest building ever built outside the Gulag--a giant concrete-slab box pimped out with plywood trim painted in gritty, lurid pastels. Inside, I made my way through a gloomy, cavernous lobby filled with posters of air-brushed fantasy women representing the seven deadly perversions. And then there was the stench of popcorn oil and the sensation of my shoes meeting something sticky on the floor. It was winter, but there were teenage girls loitering with their navels exposed.
Here I was going to the Met! I could pick out my fellow opera fans--most of them had osteoporosis, and one of them with a walker was creeping across the floor like a snail. And, oh yes, there was a gent with jacket and tie. Slowly the cattle found their way through the chute leading into a narrow room with stadium seating. A looked up and there were scores of pale, thin figures waiting motionlessly for the show to begin. The Met had found something exceeding rare: fervent pent-up demand from folks loaded with money.
A speaker appeared and greeted everyone, but few could understand her because the local mike didn't work right and most of the audience was hard-of-hearing. The show began. Now live opera is exciting if for no other reason than suspense whether the singers will remember their lines and not crack their voices. The Tinseltown live performance was even more exciting, because when the picture went black or the sound turned to static for 10 minutes, you missed 10 minutes of the show for good.
But most of the time, both an image and sound were present. The big screen was full of a picture, but it was not a high-definition picture by any definition. The images were grainy and there was some kind of big screen artifact vaguely apparent from time to time. The resolution was soft. The colors were dull and washed out from lack of sufficient light coming from the camera. I still don't know exactly what I was seeing. But I read reports in the press that the picture used in at least some of the locations came from the same projection system used by the theater to advertise the popcorn and urge the customers to use the waste cans. I don't know if this horrible report was true, but it does seem consistent with what I saw.
In contrast to the gloomy picture, the sound was bold and enveloping. The quality was not what you hear at home with high-end audio equipment; but it is pretty good, especially when compared to the fuzziness on the screen.
In spite of the smelly theater, service interruptions, and the weak picture, there did remain a nice residue of pleasure from this experience. I saw a remarkably beautiful young woman and other fine singers performing live in New York. And even if the quality was disappointing, the sheer size of the picture was engaging. You got an idea how glorious the thing was to those lucky enough to be there.
Was this worth $18? Well, if you've been on a desert island eating coconuts for 20 years, the first can of cat food that washes up on the shore will probably taste pretty good. A few weeks later, I paid another $18 to see the Met production of Eugene Onegin at Tinseltown. I don't plan to dine on opera at Tinseltown again. But I acknowledge that some folks praise the Met's movie house shows as a step in the right direction.
Still, I was elated to see I Puritani at the movies because I guessed (correctly) that the Met would have a high-definition record of the show available to posterity. Maybe one day I would be able to see this done right. And sure enough, it was shown a few weeks later on Channel 13, the Dallas PBS station. By talking to my spy at the station, I got good intelligence on when they would air it. I saw the record, in 1080i, at the appointed time. This was, I felt, one of the best things I ever saw on television (along with the Opus Arte high-definition programs that PBS was running about the same time). The pictures were radiantly clear, vivid, rich, and free of artifacts. The sound was low, but I was able to turn it up to match the picture experience. This was proof that the Met made a high-definition master record of the Netrebko I Puritani.
(Alas, I doubt that many other people saw this grand television event. It was hardly publicized. A few weeks later, I plotted to see the PBS showing of the Met's Eugene Onegin. There was a slight technical problem with the Onegin on PBS. An intermission followed Act 1. After the intermission, PBS showed Act I again, and Act II never aired. I called about 6 numbers at the station (it was a weekend) and frantically gave warning to all computers connected to their elaborate telephone menu. On Monday, an engineer from the station called to apologize for the blooper. Someone had programmed the same file on the hard drive to play twice. The engineer offered to let me come to the station and see the show. And then he confided in me: I was the only person to report that they had dropped half the opera.)
I have not seen any high-definition fine arts title on broadcast television since the Onegin disaster. But this remains potential a viable way to distribute this kind of material. Many culturevultures now have their TV service connected their home theaters. Often they have the ability to to record a program to replay later. According to a user report on the AVScience Forum, a recording of I Puritani made from a PBS broadcast was softer than the Blu-ray disc later released (and described below). Another drawback to this form of HDVD would be that broadcasts now generally provide only two channel sound. To get 5.1 or 7.1 sound, you have to seek media especially designed for home theaters.
After the disappointing experience at the movies and the exhilarating experience of seeing the Netrebko I Puritani in real high-definition television on PBS, I eagerly awaited getting an HDVD from the Met. But Deutsche Grammophon and the Met first released this in DVD. On the cover that printed the following logo: `` The Metropolitan Opera HD Live.''
Finally DG and the Met released the Netrebko 2007 I Puritani in Blu-ray on November 17, 2008! It is a vastly better product than the DVD.
In October 2008, the Met started its ``Met Player `` Internet video broadcast service, and the 2007 I Puritani was one of the 13 high-definition titles initially offered. Does this offering qualify to be a HDVD (as in ``high-definition video download'') of I Puritani? Well, we review an item on this website if it is in 720p or higher and has at least 5.0 surround sound. I still don't know what the video or audio specifications of a Met Player download will be when shown in a home theater. But I assume that one day we will see this download in 1080p with 5.1 sound. So this review remains a work in progress.
CVs believe the eye deserves to be ravished the same as the ear. The Netrebko 2007 I Puritani in Blu-ray accomplishes this mission .
December 30, 2008