In the Met’s new production of Vincenzo Bellini and Carlo Pepoli’s I Puritani, the signs of trouble for both eye and ear came early, the first arriving with a glance at the program’s list of characters, which revealed the presence of three non-singing figures not to be found in the score’s list of personaggi: a Young Arturo, a Young Elvira, and a Lord Talbot. Sure enough, they were there to turn our attention from ear to eye during the Introduzione, which after the wonderfully premonitive opening was dedicated to a dumb show given over to a fragment of backstory involving our hero and heroine in preadolescence and the hero’s father, the last in full Cavalier regalia. With the true start of the opera’s action, in a pattern soon to be followed by Donizetti and Cammarano in Lucia Lammermoor, an opening chorus is succeeded by a two-part aria in which the baritone antagonist, in dialogue with an allied comprimario character, sets forth his complaint. In this case, though, the complaint is a fragrant, elegant reflection on a lost love (cavatina, rather as if Di Luna had been given “Il balen del suo sorriso” on his first entrance) and then an uplifting paean to the memory of that love, with an implication of lingering hope (cabaletta). What I am quite sure I heard in this scene is a baritone (Artur Rucinski) with a voice of acceptable quality but very narrow span making his way through the aria’s first part (the dramatic recitative “Or dove fuggo io mai?” and the cavatina “Ah! per sempre io ti perdei“) in a workmanlike, monochromatic fashion, with little recognition of the inflectional opportunities offered for emotional contact or of the ornamental felicities that render up musical enjoyment. I say “quite sure” because as the singer was undoubtedly doing his best to make something out of his music and I was  doing my best to attend to his efforts, he and I were equally beset with a great deal of assigned busywork—the signing and handing off of documents, like a whilom war correspondent filing dispatches—to which we both were required to attend while the aria slipped on past.  So I sensed at the outset that I was to be confronted with staging innocent of any sense of priorities in the presentation of a major set piece. Then, after the interjected appeal from the comprimario companion to heed the patriotic call, the baritone launched into the cabaletta (“Bel sogno beato“), whose energy and simple line in the upper-middle range brought his voice a bit more to the fore, though he did little with the music and its repeats beyond reciting the wordnotes—until, at the close, he interpolated a high G. The note was neither big nor beautiful, and it did not develop while held, but the hold was very long, through the 21 bars of orchestral music that bring the scene to a close, and accompanied by the frank visual signifiers (arm outstretched, visage illuminated in a glow of self-congratulation) for “Applause, please.” And upon conclusion of this provincial appeal a great roar of shouts and whoops burst forth from all sides of my balcony perch. What a feat! Never heard anything like it!