I puritani e i cavalieri (I puritani)
Opera in three acts
Libretto by Carlo Pepoli
Music by Vincenzo Bellini
New production - Co-production with Teatro Regio di Torino
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Season 2014/2015
Opera
I Puritani
BY VINCENZO BELLINI
Artists
Conductor
Matteo Beltrami
Director
Fabio Ceresa
Scenes
Tiziano Santi
Costumes
Giuseppe Palella
Light design
Marco Filibeck
Choreographies
Nikos Lagousakos
Scenic movement assistant
Riccardo Olivier
Orchestra and Choir of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Giorgio Valton
Gianluca Buratto/ Riccardo Zanellato (30/01, 01-04/02)
Elvira, daughter of Gualtiero
Jessica Pratt / Maria Aleida (01-04-10 /02)
Riccardo
Massimo Cavalletti / Julian Kim (01-04-10 /02)
Lord Arturo Talbo
Antonino Siragusa / Jésus Léon (01-04-10 /02)
Enrichetta
Rossana Rinaldi / Martina Belli (01-04-10/ 02)
Bruno Robertson
Saverio Fiore
Lord Gualtiero
Gianluca Margheri
Performer - Fattoria Vittadini
Mattia Agatiello
Pablo Andres Tapia Leyton
Alexander McCabe
Riccardo Olivier
Daniele Pennati
Claudio Pisa
Approfondimenti
PHOTO
Reharsals of I Puritani
Reharsals of I Puritani
VIDEO
Behind the scenes of I Puritani
Behind the scenes of I Puritani
ACT I
In a Puritan stronghold at Plymouth, it is the wedding day of Elvira, the daughter of Governor Lord Gualtiero Valton, and Lord Arturo Talbo, who is a follower of the enemy faction of the Stuarts. Colonel Sir Riccardo Forth, to whom Lord Valton had previously conceded his daughter's hand, is bitter. Meanwhile Sir George, Elvira's uncle, goes to inform her that he has finally persuaded her father to approve the marriage to her beloved Arturo. The groom enters the armory; the governor gives him a safe-conduct out of the fort to reach the church. Lord Valton cannot attend the wedding, because he must escort a mysterious prisoner to London. The young man, aware that it is the Queen Enrichetta of France, widow of the executed Charles I, decides to take her to safety concealing her in Elvira's bridal veil. Riccardo, entering with his sword drawn to impede the wedding, does not hinder Arturo's plan, exploiting the absence of his rival to his favor. While all curse the fugitives, Elvira, distraught, loses her mind.
ACT II
Elvira wanders the rooms of the castle calling for her beloved Arturo. Sir Giorgio persuades Riccardo to intercede with Parliament to pardon the young man, who has been sentenced to death, to save the girl more suffering.
ACT III
Arturo, hidden in a cloak, is in the garden of Elvira's apartments. Hearing her sing a romance of love he joins the singing and the two can finally embrace. The Puritans burst in with the death sentence for Arturo; at this news Elvira returns to her senses and declares that she will follow her beloved even to their graves. Suddenly a messenger arrives: Cromwell has defeated the Stuarts and granted pardon to all their followers and the two young people, among the general exaltation can be reunited at last.
VINCENZO BELLINI
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was born in Catania on November 3, 1801 into a family of musicians to whom he owed his early training. In 1819 the Decurionate of Catania gave him a scholarship to the Real Collegio di Napoli; here, six years later, as a final exam, he presented his first opera: Aldeson and Salvini. After considerable success at the Teatro San Carlo in 1826 with Bianca e Fernando, Bellini was invited by the impresario Domenico Barbaja to the Teatro alla Scala and for this stage he created masterpieces such as Il pirata (1827), La straniera (1829) and Norma (1831); in the meanwhile he penned I Capuleti ei Montecchi (1830) for the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and La Sonnambula (1831) for the Teatro Carcano in Milan. Awarded a contract for the Théâtre-Italien directed by Rossini, he made his Parisian debut in January of 1835 with I Puritani. He died on September 23 of that year, at only thirty-four, in Puteax, near Paris.
FABIO CERESA
After classical training in piano, he dedicated himself to directing opera. He collaborated with Graham Vick, Peter Hall, Sebastiano Lo Monaco and Marco Gandini, making his directing debut in 2006 with La Traviata. In 2008 he worked as an assistant director at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, in collaboration with Luca Ronconi, Pier Luigi Pizzi and Eimuntas Nekrošius. In 2010 he staged Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini at the Teatro Pergolesi in Jesi, reproduced in February 2014 at the Teatro Comunale in Florence; L'italiana in Algeri in 2012 for the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari and the following year Giovanna d'Arco for the Festival della Valle d'Itria.
The time of the Puritans
by Fabio Ceresa
How much time elapses between the first and third acts of the Puritans? A little more than thirty minutes for the viewer. Three months, according to Arthur. But even three centuries to Elvira, which dilates the moments of waiting until exasperation.
The first rays of the sun which penetrate the darkness at the beginning of the operas are then transformed into a physical phenomenon that relativizes the time, moving on separate rails the different characters of the drama. Arthur, who chooses politics instead of love, moves away from the world in a kind of astral travel, for those which he believes to be just a few days.
But for those who remain, for Elvira, time flows differently. How many things can happen in three hundred years? Time has brought down the towers of the castle, has uncovered the roof, shattered the windows, crumbled stones until they become dust. Day after day, the skin of the hands has withered, has withdrawn showing the bones: the characters become old, dead, restless ghosts suspended in a dimension somewhere between night and dawn, between wakefulness and sleep, like ghosts condemned to eternal fight in the same battle.
Subverted the rules of nature, man just have to find within himself the strength to be able to restore the order of things. The repentance of Richard, the release of Arthur, the light in the mind of Elvira; every action is a child of a single ideal: pardoning.
Pardon announced by the ringing of the brass that opens and closes the opera. The trumpet calls souls to eternal salvation, to that universal judgment that sets men free from the shackles of space and time. The paroxysmal waiting for redemption finally comes to its end: through forgiveness, spirits can leave the shadows and hover like sparks of pure light, driven forever to eternity in heaven.