Vincenzo Bellini realised early on that as titles go, Le teste rotonde ed i cavalieri (The Roundheads and the Cavaliers) doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. He settled for I puritani instead, though he’d have been equally happy (or so he told friends) to name the whole opera after its lovestruck heroine Elvira. He admitted that the plot catches fire only after she loses her mind: the soprano who plays her has to be able to act, and she really has to be able to sing. ‘In opera, it is the singing that moves one to tears, that causes horror, that inspires death,’ as Bellini put it, and he practised what he preached.

So let’s dispense with preliminaries and say upfront that the main reason to see the Royal Opera’s new production of I puritani is Lisette Oropesa’s performance as Elvira. Covent Garden adores Oropesa, and rightly. The poise and sensitivity of her stage presence is matched by a voice of supple, endlessly nuanced sweetness. She’s a diva in the old, true sense, unrivalled in the way she balances a melody on its accompaniment, as well as the dewdrop freshness of her high notes and her ability to infuse a falling phrase with a hundred shades of quiet sorrow. At the Royal Opera, she’s been the most seductive and queenly of Alcinas, and her Violetta Valéry made skylarks jealous.

Nigel........

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