Lisette Oropesa as Elvira and Christian Van Horn as Giorgio. Photo: Ken Howard / Met Opera

What do we want from historical romance? Should it reflect its time or offer escape from it? Fact and fantasy coexist frequently in opera, but balancing these impulses proves both fascinating and difficult in Charles Edwards’s new production of I Puritani, the first at the Metropolitan Opera in over four decades. The star-crossed pair—the Puritan Elvira and staunch Royalist Arturo—are separated first by Arturo’s divided loyalties and then, more disturbingly, by Elvira’s increasing madness. And while the 17th Century is the historical backdrop, I Puritani is more a reflection of 19th-century Italian opera tropes than of the English Civil War: mad scenes and cries of “la patria!”

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Edwards’s production amps up both the historical context and adds in some psychoanalytic touches to its general peril; maps of Plymouth under siege are projected, and chyrons appear to deliver snippets of the English Civil War timeline. There is more than one green-tinged mad sequence in which ghostly doubles of our characters float through the scene. Elvira paints numerous hideous self-portraits that recall more AP Art portfolio than Robert Walker, and in a climactic scene, she hurls them across the room and punches an arm through one of them. There’s a lot going on here, in other words.

For an opera with a tighter grip on its own historical setting, this approach could be both informative and compelling, but in I Puritani the English Civil War is used primarily to provide obstacles to the lovers. The additional history, instead of amping up the drama, only........

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