On New Year’s Eve, the Met unveils its first new staging of Bellini’s resplendent vocal showcase I Puritani in nearly 50 years (through January 18). Two of today’s most astounding artists—soprano Lisette Oropesa and tenor Lawrence Brownlee—star as young lovers caught in the crossfire of the English Civil War, with Charles Edwards directing a stirring new production that harnesses the history and high drama of the opera’s 17th-century setting.

Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Girl spirals into madness in a blaze of vocal glory. It’s a framework that has proven successful for many a bel canto masterpiece—including Bellini’s I Puritani, whose heroine spends most of the opera’s three action-packed acts out of her senses. In this season’s new production, superlative soprano Lisette Oropesa stars as the unhinged Elvira, a young bride whose dreams of love turn to heartbreak when her fiancé jilts her on their wedding day. To depict this emotional unraveling, the composer created one of his most virtuosic roles—combining dazzling coloratura pyrotechnics with long lines of aching beauty—and in Oropesa, who has conquered the world’s greatest stages with her high-flying portrayals, Met audiences have a leading lady ready to rise to the challenge.

For Charles Edwards, who directs the new staging, coming to grips with I Puritani’s outsized plot and its many twists and turns holds the key to appreciating the opera’s charm. “There’s a misconception that bel canto pieces are only about great singing, and the stories are silly or strange or ridiculous,” he says. “But I think that’s the point. These pieces are thrillers. And you only have to listen to the music to discover that they also contain great psychological truth.”

While this staging marks Edwards’s directorial debut at the Met, he’s no stranger to the company, having previously designed scenery for four productions by director David McVicar, beginning with Verdi’s Il Trovatore in 2009. As a director elsewhere, he has savored the opportunity to stage masterpieces by Wagner, Verdi, and Puccini, but his heart remains with the bel canto canon—the era of Italian opera that flourished in the first half the 19th century and put superhuman demands on the vocalists, often with breathtaking results. “It’s true that ‘bel canto’ means ‘beautiful singing,’ but it’s not just beautiful, it’s expressive,” Edwards says. “I’ve always loved working with singers and loved the notion that they can convey drama through song, especially the extremely difficult but also very delicate vocal lines that Bellini was famous for writing."

When I Puritani premiered in 1835, the four artists inhabiting the principal roles, all leading stars in their day, created such a sensation that they were known forever after as the Puritani Quartet. Two centuries later, the Met has assembled a modern-day Puritani Quartet of its own. Alongside Oropesa—whom Edwards declares “a theatrical genius with so many colors at her disposal”—the cast also features tenor Lawrence Brownlee as Elvira’s beloved, Lord Arturo Talbot, a role for which The New York Times hailed him as “a model of bel canto style.” Baritone Artur Ruciński is his swashbuckling rival, Sir Riccardo Forth, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn rounds out the sterling ensemble as Elvira’s steadfast uncle, Sir Giorgio Walton. Maestro Marco Armiliato takes the podium to oversee his third New Year’s Eve gala premiere with the company.

Edwards remembers first encountering I Puritani on recordings as a teenager and immediately falling under its spell. He was particularly drawn to the opera’s connections to his homeland: Set against the backdrop of the English Civil War—when the Parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell were vying for power against the Royalist armies led by would-be-king Charles II—the opera opens as Elvira, daughter of a prominent Puritan lord, is betrothed to the Royalist Arturo Talbot. Just as the wedding is set to begin, Arturo learns that the deposed Queen Enrichetta is headed to her execution. Loyal to his cause, he intervenes to help her escape and, in the process, abandons his bride at the altar, plunging her into madness. (It’s only when he returns two acts later that Elvira finally regains her faculties.) “It’s exactly the kind of piece I feel happiest doing, where the action moves very quickly, and then a page later, suddenly there’s a magnificent ensemble, and everything completely stops,” Edwards says. “My job as a director is to make the story as clear as possible while still preserving the sense of fantasy."

For him, Elvira’s madness is more than mere hysterics or an excuse for vocal pyrotechnics—it represents her transgression of the strictures of Puritan society. Taking a cue from Têtes Rondes et Cavaliers, the French play on which Bellini based his opera, the director introduces a new element to Elvira’s character: Early on in the opera, audiences will see her painting a portrait of a regal yet mysterious woman—in reality, the imprisoned Queen Enrichetta, whose elegant attire and refined air contrast sharply with the austere world the girl has known up until then. “Elvira has had to repress her self-expression, her sexuality, her identity as a woman, so when she encounters Enrichetta, in a way she idolizes her,” Edwards explains. “But when it appears that Arturo has rejected her in favor of this woman, it triggers a crisis of self-esteem. For me, Elvira doesn’t go mad. She just acts out everything that is inside her—her true personality comes out. And in this society, for someone to behave in such a liberated way leads everyone to believe something must be wrong with her.” Oropesa, who first sang the role in 2022 and has since made it a signature, concurs. “In opera, they call it a mad scene, but we experience these emotions all the time. I practically went through a mad scene a day during the pandemic! Imagine suffering everything Elvira does and having no one to help you—you’d be pulling your hair out and talking to yourself too."

But while the heroine and her dizzying vocal displays remain squarely in the spotlight, Edwards is quick to point out that “the opera isn’t called Elvira. It’s about the Puritans. It’s about that society.” With this as a guiding principle, he and his creative team—costume designer Gabrielle Dalton, lighting designer Tim Mitchell, and movement director Tim Claydon, all in their Met debuts—have remained faithful to the opera’s historical setting and created a visual world that mirrors the community: a 17th-century Puritan meeting house, which serves simultaneously as public gathering place, church, courtroom, and makeshift fortress. Far from a static environment, though, the structure evolves over the course of the drama to reflect the community and their struggles. What begins as a stately yet modest hall, with tall windows and rows of benches flanking a central pulpit, gradually descends into scenic chaos, riddled with bullet holes and partially collapsed by cannon fire—a reflection of the battles raging both outside its walls and within Elvira’s mind.

Dalton’s costumes play a similar role, with the Puritans arrayed in simple, unadorned garments. Arturo and Enrichetta’s colorful finery therefore shock the system—as Elvira eventually does when she dons one of the queen’s gowns on her wedding day. But after Arturo’s rejection sends her spinning, Elvira clings to the garment, and the once-pristine frock deteriorates and becomes caked with grime and paint, as Elvira obsessively creates portrait after portrait of the woman she believes has stolen her beloved. 

In designing the scenery, Edwards was conscious that it be both dramatically effective and acoustically supportive of the cast, noting that the high walls will act as a sounding board and allow them the greatest possible dynamic range. “There are so many places in Puritani where you feel Bellini is asking the singers to draw the audience in, and if I’ve done my job, this will be an environment where they can be so expressive, so sensitive in their approach, that even among the 4,000 seats at the Met, you’ll be able to hear a pin drop,” he says.

Following recent turns as Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata and the title heroine of Massenet’s Manon, Oropesa is poised to soar even higher as Elvira. She admits, though, that when she initially began studying the score before her role debut in Naples, she found it “impossibly difficult. You have to have range, stamina, coloratura, dynamics—because you can’t cut corners with bel canto—and there’s no moment to relax. Even in the ensembles, Elvira has really high lines and these long, humongous notes that she holds forever and ever and ever,” she says. “But the opera is more than one great soprano part. All of the main characters have real featured vocal moments, so you need to have a stellar cast across the board.” With Brownlee, Ruciński, and Van Horn—all of whom have had notable Met successes in bel canto roles—at Oropesa’s side, the stars are aligned.

Writing to Count Carlo Pepoli, his librettist for I Puritani, Bellini advised, “Through singing, opera must make you weep, shudder, die.” It’s a lofty goal but one that Edwards, his creative team, and the cast are striving to achieve. “This opera really is a high-wire act, and of course, the acrobatics of it are thrilling,” the director says, “but I hope that we can go even beyond that to really delve into the psychological depth of these characters and make something deeply touching."