I Puritani

England during the Civil War between the Royalist cavaliers and the Puritanical Roundheads under the reign of Oliver Cromwell: Elvira, who is supposed to marry the Puritan Riccardo against her will, is imagining herself as free and far away from the besieged Puritan fortress that is under her father’s command. On the run from that forced marriage, Elvira clings to uncle Giorgio, her “second father” as he enables her to enjoy all the things that the Puritans have forbidden: the joy in dressing up, the pleasure for the theatre and the love for music.

Since its world premiere in 1835, Vincenzo Bellini’s last opera has acted as a messenger of an ecstatic Belcanto’s dissolution of boundaries.