Cinta di fiori (I Puritani)

I Puritani was Bellini's last opera, written in Paris for the Théâtre-Italien and first performed there on 24 January 1835, eight months before his death at thirty-three. Carlo Pepoli, an exiled Italian poet with no experience of libretti, supplied the text; Bellini complained about it throughout and shaped much of the verse himself. The four singers of the first cast — Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini and Lablache — were the finest available, and the writing assumes them. The English Civil War setting matters less than the long melodic lines drawn over it, which Chopin and Verdi both studied.