Language: Italian
Subtitles: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

I Puritani (The Puritans) is an 1835 opera by Vincenzo Bellini. It was originally written in two acts and later changed to three acts on the advice of Gioachino Rossini, with whom the young composer had become friends. The music was set to a libretto by Count Carlo Pepoli, an Italian émigré poet whom Bellini had met at a salon run by the exile Princess Belgiojoso, which became a meeting place for many Italian revolutionaries. The opera is based on Têtes Rondes et Cavaliers (Roundheads and Cavaliers), a historical play written by Jacques-François Ancelot and Joseph Xavier Saintine and set in the English Civil War, which some sources state was based on Walter Scott's 1816 novel Old Mortality, while others state that there is no connection.

When Bellini arrived in Paris in mid-August 1833, he had intended to stay only about three weeks, the main aim being to continue the negotiations with the Paris Opéra which had begun on his way to London a few months earlier. These negotiations came to nothing, but by October he had decided to spend the winter in that city, especially as both Il pirata and I Capuleti e i Montecchi were to be given by the Théâtre-Italien that season. The offer from the Théâtre came in January 1834; he accepted because "the pay was richer than what I had received in Italy up to then, though only by a little; then because of so magnificent a company; and finally so as to remain in Paris at others' expense."

In 17th-century England, just after the beheading of Charles I, the supporters of the republican Cromwell – the Puritans – are rejoicing at Elvira’s forthcoming marriage to Arturo, despite the fact that he is a royalist. But when the young Cavalier discovers the identity of the prisoner guarded by the Puritans, everything is turned upside down…

In his last opera, blending melancholy with fiery lyricism, Bellini delivers one of his loveliest female portraits in Elvira, who progresses from adolescent gaiety to madness before finally achieving happiness. It is precisely through her eyes that Laurent Pelly approaches I Puritani. Locked in a sharp-edged castle-prison, Elvira draws us into the projections of her mental space: a warlike, masculine world where she struggles to live out her desires.

Direction: Emilio Sagi (Director), Evelino Pidò (Music Conductor)
Cast: Diana Damrau (Elvira), Javier Camarena (Arturo), Ludovic Tézier (Riccardo), Nicolas Testé (Sir Giorgio), Annalisa Stroppa (Erichetta di Francia), Miklós Seestyén (Valton), Antonio Lozano (Bruno Robertson), Choirs of the Teatro Real, Orchestra of the Teatro Real