From The Top: Healing a broken heart: lessons from “I puritani”


I have a particular love for the bel canto period of opera. In fact, I feel like most of the musical examples I’ve used for this column reside in this era. The bel canto style of singing, which originated in Italy during the 19th century, places particular emphasis on the natural beauty and timbre of the voice. It strays its focus from dramatic emotion or even precision of the written music — rather, bel canto flourishes on stylistic phrasing driven by how beautiful one can sing the phrase. It may not be the most dignified or high-brow style of classical music, but bel canto is my biggest guilty pleasure.

For instance, Bellini’s last opera I puritani (“The Puritans”) contains some of the most beautiful and enthralling music of the era. Given Bellini’s proclivity for writing haunting and mesmerizing melodies, it’s not hard for musicians to ease into this style of singing. One of my favorite recordings of this show is from the Metropolitan Opera in 1997, featuring Stuart Neill, Ruth Ann Swensen and Thomas Hampson — within the first 10 minutes, I’m already delirious from the expressive musicality achieved under the baton of conductor Edoardo Müller. I puritani begins with Riccardo (sung by Hampson in this recording), leader of the Puritans, who is heartbroken after learning Elvira has left him for another. Prior to the action taking place, he’d been promised Elvira’s hand in marriage by her father and plans had already been set for their impending nuptial. However, Elvira was already in love with another cavalier, Lord Arturo, and she instead chooses to marry him, with her father’s blessing. Riccardo is obviously heartbroken, and expresses his grief through his first recitativo and aria, “Or dove fuggo io mai? … Ah, per sempre io ti perdei!” (“O where … Ah, forever I have lost you!”). His music is, in my opinion, some of Bellini’s most passionate. Other operaphiles argue that Elvira’s mad scene in Act II is the opera’s tour de force — I disagree. While powerful, oftentimes her mad scene reads as self-indulgent and wanly personal. What Riccardo’s aria offers that Elvira’s doesn’t is sensitivity.

As the leader of such a large group of revolutionaries, Riccardo isn’t one to wear his heart on his sleeve; he is expected to remain stoic around his peers and colleagues. Depending on staging, he should be himself during the aria, give-or-take a few lines with Sir Bruno during the recitativo. This solitude adds adds to the sadness of the situation, so that his moment of despair is so personal that it makes me believe he’s a sensitive person at his core. I, too, am not one who is overtly effusive in public. I consider myself to be an emotional person, but these feelings are much more internal. I don’t think my proclivity to remain restrained is intentional. But in a world that’s so critical of men who emote publically, my natural instinct is to retreat. So, like Riccardo and myself, how do you cope once you’ve lost the love of your life?  How do you move on from heartbreak that devastates your life and prohibits you from moving forward.

The answer is: You don’t. At least not for a very long time.

Opera is all about extremes. There is really nothing subtle about the art form. When a character is in despair, typically they go mad, kill themselves, or both. There is no guide or tips for self-healing or counseling while dealing with a crisis. And with an opera like I puritani, where multiple characters lose their betrothed and/or go mad, things can get unsettling. Riccardo lost Elvira to another man. Later in the opera, Elvira believes she loses Arturo to another. And though the opera deals with common themes everyone is bound to experience at one point, it doesn’t give you the tools to deal with these outcomes.

Like in most stage shows or movies, the process of love and life is typically expedited. Characters are constantly falling in love at first sight. Adversely, they fall out of love just as fast as they originally fell. So when a character is in despair, their first instinct is to end their own life. As viewers, how are we supposed to interpret these decisions? Certainly, it’s absurd to resort to suicide, especially in the case of losing one another to someone else. But clearly, those who wrote these types of shows know just how hard it takes to get over someone. In their minds, it’s easier to end it rather than taking it required time to heal and cope, such as wallowing and smoking a f-ckton of weed. Maybe it’s Bellini’s cynical way of telling us that it’s better to end it all rather than dealing with hardship. That may work for fictional characters, but surely this message isn’t suited for realistic audiences.

By the end, things work out for Elvira and Arturo, but not Riccardo. His fate is left unknown, but it’s assumed he remains alone. But I find myself thinking a lot about his fate and how his life played out. Though he did try to sabotage Elvira and Arturo’s happiness, I still feel sympathetic toward him — obviously, the heartbreak caused his rationality to fly out the window. I hope he eventually got over Elvira. I hope he came to terms with their happiness and used healthy techniques thereafter to heal his emotional wounds. For Riccardo’s sake, I’m writing his life’s ending for him, because everyone deserves closure.

Arya Roshanian is a “senior” majoring in music. His column, “From The Top,” runs Tuesdays.