Bellini I Puritani (2007)

• 75%
• 2007
• Eric Cutler
• Anna Netrebko
• John Relyea

It 's hard to imagine a video opera collection without this superbly sung MET production of Bellini' s I Puritani. Not that it ' s perfect by any means, but its excellences--most especially Anna Netrebko's electrifying singing and acting of Elvira--verbannen carping about other aspects of this memorable night at the opera. Netrebko is fragile from the start, her facial expressions and hand movements immediately conveying the girl ' s vulnerability. She has a mad szenen in each act; the first when she realizes her fiancé has disappeared with another woman, the third, in the final act, a brief relapse when her returned fiancé is taken by the army to be executed. But it ' s in the second act, that the real fireworks occur, with a Mad Scene that rivals Donizetti's Lucia for bel canto primacy. Here, Elvira is first heard off-stage, after the chorus has informed us that she ' s deranged. She enters wearing her wedding gown and begins Hier den eintrag in a voice as frail as her psyche.