Two Productions of Bellini's "I Puritani"

I wrote this at the beginning of my second year, for a series of Musical Thought and Scholarship tutorials with Michael Graham. He focused our assignments around the Welsh National Opera's two touring productions that year: Donizetti's I Puritani and Handel's Orlando.

At the end of Opera di Firenze's 2015 production of Bellini's I Puritani, the sun rises on the puritan company (in this production they are also either vampires or zombies) who, gleefully occupying the stage, fall down dead. In many ways, the entire cast dropping dead is an appropriate response to a plot which resolves so abruptly: the complex ramifications of Arturo's having both abandoned his fiancée and himself betraying the puritan cause manifest in general despair at the knowledge that his death sentence would surely drive Elvira to incurable madness. Therefore, the sudden and incredibly last-minute discovery by letter that Cromwell has decided to pardon all royalist prisoners makes it hard for an audience to believe that everything is completely fine after all, and that there is no ill feeling. At least if all of the undead perish at the crack of dawn there are no loose ends to tie up.

Referring specifically to a tendency to sonically draw attention to the body by sighing and groaning, Mary Ann Smart writes that, “if any artistic tradition grants greater prominence to the body than bel canto opera, while also representing that body in utterly formulaic terms, it must be the Gothic novel.” The connection is overt in this production, Elvria's “wide Gothic window” described in the libretto is embedded in a deep spire on this set, which extends backwards, disturbing straightforward perspectives of what is up and what is down, especially when the chorus enter through crypts in the floor (which could also be a wall). A disrupted view of space and direction is particularly appropriate in act two, when the plot's trajectory is largely put on hold, and much time is spent either watching or discussing Elvira's supposedly mad episodes. This set's unconventional opening-up of literal space not only reflects bel canto's long, expansive melodies, but creates a new, imagined platform for the frequent off-stage that is specific to I Puritani. Smart writes of a “dramatic realism that extends beyond the stage” that is signified by offstage voices;  a “magical realm of space just beyond the set, invested with supernatural importance” by their unseen, untouchable qualities. That the undead should inhabit such an ambiguous realm makes sense, and the “distant, ethereal, spectral” Elvira that Smart draws out of the score is effectively implied by Riccardo's kissing the face of a crypt statue when he sings of her or embodied by a veiled, Gothically dressed figure emerging (after her voice has echoed around untraceably) from the wall/ceiling or, in the case of act three, the dawn mist.

In spite of bel canto's Gothic qualities, this production presents a legitimate problem in its visual aesthetic: it is hard to imagine that these decadently dressed vampires—the aristocracy of the undead—are supposed to be anti-royalist freedom fighters and devout protestants. These are conditions of the libretto brought to the fore in Wiener Staatsoper's 2015 production, in which the action take place at the feet—and around the severed heads—of bronzed kings of old. King Charles is beheaded. Under these dismembered patriarchs, the puritan dress of the chorus (all of whom are presented as men) and the minimal set are overtly protestant, and Henrietta, ceremonially stripped of her crown and rosary during the triumphant opening chorus, looks alien in her royal dress in a manner so thoroughly unachieved  in the Firenze production that Elvria and Henrietta, both in lavish pink dresses, could easily be mistaken for one another.

While incoherent with the historical specifics of the plot, however, Henrietta's dress opens up new possibilities for psychoanalytic exploration hinted at in I Puritani's source play, in which Elvira actually mistakes Henrietta for herself, crying, “that woman! is she not me? . . . where am I myself then? . . . it is I who am his wife! . . . There must be two [Elviras]!”. This misrecognition (Lacanian méconnaissance), the widening of the gap between her body and its apparent double, is not only the catalyst for her psychosis, but has an isolating effect on both her and the audience; a breakdown of identity. This application of ghostly, uncanny doubles extends across the cast, to the many veiled Elviras that silently people the stage at the start of act three to the vampire court—animated corpses and consequently deeply unfamiliar. This is why Riccardo and Giorgio's brief, firmly platonic embracing of arms at the end of their duet in act one of the Wien production exhibits more intimacy than even Elvira and Arturo's act three reunion in the Firenze production, which they spend seated back-to-back astride a grave.

In spite of its human contact and firmer sense of identity, the Wien production invokes isolation in its minimal aesthetic, yet it is only when Elvira breaks away from the set's mould that this becomes noticeable. It is only when she appears, mad, in act two with dishevelled hair that it becomes clear how immaculate her hair was before; only when the back walls of the set open to reveal her poised, drenched in pink lighting that it becomes clear how grey and box-like the set was before; only when, thrashing, she reveals a sliver of ankle that it becomes clear how prudish and long-sleeved her wedding dress is; only when she runs frantically among the puritans the it becomes clear how still they are standing; only when she laughs maniacally before her cabaletta that it becomes clear that the only human sounds heard in the puritan court are structured song. In the context of all of these transgressions of custom, what is usually enacted as genuine concern by Elvira's friends and relatives in act 2 begins to look much more like shame. Even the forest of act three feels oppressive, with its low-hanging lamps which Elvira must push through to reach Arturo. When the lamps are lifted along with Cromwell's abrupt pardon letter, the plot's hollow ending is greeted with a bare stage which feels every bit as oppressive in its blankness as its crowded counterpart.

Much like the Firenze production, the Wien can only make sense of I Puritani's sudden emotional U-turn with violence. A jealous Riccardo stabs Arturo to death while Elvira looks on, slipping further back into madness as she sings a virtuosic swansong before flopping into a Liebestod on top of him. Both of these productions' mistrust of the letter's naively optimistic ending suggest that the reality of staging bel canto opera extends beyond the means available in I Puritani's score: stick to the historical aesthetic given and something of bel canto's Gothic excesses and expansive spaces are lost; explore the stranger, more Gothic realms of bodily prominence and the political context (and therefore some of the characters' motivation) is compromised. It is this impasse between English puritan reserve and Italian operatic excess that a director of I Puritani must traverse. Whether that means to have a static, uniformed court encircling a thrashing madwoman or a court of decadent monsters never making eye contact, a coherent production of this opera seems difficult to conceive of. Nevertheless, that doesn't render any attempt to engage with a score and a libretto in tension any less interesting or bold.