Word: bellini
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Lolitas they're not, but if Joan Sutherland and Sarah Caldwell really gave the first U.S. staging of Bellini's / Puritani, they'd have had to be in Philadelphia...
...achieved her major reputation with a blinding display of Baroque wizardry 8% years ago in Handel's Julius Caesar. Subsequent years brought triumphs in Massenet's Manon; Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and trilogy of queens, Roberto Devereux, Maria Stuarda, Anna Bolena; and more recently, Bellini's / Puritani. Vocal fireworks are Sills' glory. She has a light, lyric coloratura so clear and swift that it seems phosphorescent. Though she is the best Manon around, her trademark has become the revival of obscure operas of the 19th century bel canto...
...herself. Last week she did, in a way that should silence doubters and suggest to everyone else that she will go on singing for at least another ten years. At the New York City Opera, Sills took aim at one of the toughest operas in all bel canto, Vincenzo Bellini's I Puritani. When she was done, Bellini was on his knees, the capacity audience at the New York State Theater on its feet for a long ovation. In post-World War II productions of Puritani, only Maria Callas has achieved anything to equal Sills' limpid coloration, melting...
...full title of this seldom produced opera, I Puritani di Scozia, is never used any more. That is because Bellini's Italian librettist, Carlo Pepoli, thought Plymouth was in Scotland instead of southern England. The curtain rises to find the Puritans in league with Cromwell in his battle against the Cavaliers loyal to the Stuarts. The Puritan leader, Lord Walton, is even holding prisoner the widow of Charles I, Enrichetta...
...production puts Sills back into English history, where in recent years she has triumphed in the Donizetti trilogy devoted to three queens-Elizabeth I (Roberto Devereux), Maria Stuarda and Anna Bolena. I Puritani was the last opera Bellini wrote before he died in 1835 at age 33. Its graceful and ornate vocal writing actually suits Sills' light voice better than Donizetti's heavyweight scores. This is music to float jewels on. Sills' succession of bravura displays in the mad scene ("Qui la voce sua soave ") is like a string of emeralds, each deeper and more lustrous...