Recording
Title: I Puritani
Performers: Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti,
Conductor: Richard Bonynge
Year: 1973
Length: 3 hours
Review
Some of these Italian Romantic operas have the "gift" of often blending into each other. This one feels like an inferior Lucia di Lamermoor at times, from the very long mad scene and histrionics of the Romantic heroine to parts of the plot.
Bellini is just not as good as Donizetti, his great masterwork, Norma, does deserve all the praise it gets, however, his further career is much more checkered and this is a case of an opera where it doesn't come off that brilliantly.
The plot is unoriginal, even if it does end well, an uncommon event for this time. The singing is not as spectacular as that in Norma or in Donizetti's operas and really, while being nowhere near bad, there were much better things at the time, making this opera feel like a bit of a pointless addition to the list.
Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Libretto by Count Carlo Pepoli based on Têtes rondes et Cavaliers by Jacques-François Ancelot and Joseph Xavier Saintine. First produced at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris, January 24, 1835. At the same time, Bellini composed an alternative version intended for the famous Maria Malibran, who was to sing it in Naples; in fact, this version was not performed on stage until April 10, 1986 at the Teatro Petruzzelli, Bari.
Credeasi, Misera!:
2 comments:
I definitly love your blogs, especially the "1001 albums" one. But I'd like to ask you something : how can you manage to find these albums ? I would like to start listening to the "classical recording" list too, but I cannot find these recording in my city. Do you get them on the internet ?
François: I get most of the albums using Napster. You pay for the service monthly and you get unlimited downloads. When Napter doesn't have the album I try to find it for download using eMule or Torrents. When that isn't possible I buy it through Amazon... I end up doing that a lot more than I wanted to.
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