I puritani (The Puritans) is an 1835 opera by Vincenzo Bellini. It was originally written in two acts and later changed to three acts on the advice of Gioachino Rossini, with whom the young composer had become friends. The music was set to a libretto by Count Carlo Pepoli, an Italian émigré poet whom Bellini had met at a salon run by the exile Princess Belgiojoso, which became a meeting place for many Italian revolutionaries. The opera is based on Têtes Rondes et Cavaliers (Roundheads and Cavaliers), a historical play written by Jacques-François Ancelot and Joseph Xavier Saintine and set in the English Civil War, which some sources state was based on Walter Scott's 1816 novel Old Mortality, while others state that there is no connection.

Callas first sang Bellini’s Norma in 1948, when she was just 25. She went on to perform the role of the heroic, but vulnerable Druid priestess –the ultimate embodiment of bel canto – more frequently than any other. In this second studio recording her conductor was again Tullio Serafin (he originally tutored her in the role in 1948),and the venue was again La Scala – where the opera was premiered in 1831. By 1960, Callas brought a wealth of new nuance to her interpretation, and she is aptly partnered by the creamy-voiced Christa Ludwig (in a rare recording of an Italian role) and the towering Franco Corelli.

In the six years that had passed since 1953, and her first recording of Lucia di Lammermoor, Callas’s voice had maybe become less robust,but her singing had become still more perceptive. As Gramophone said: ‘Mme Callas has refined her interpretation of the role, and made it more exquisite, more fascinating,musically and dramatically more subtle – in a word, more beautiful.’

This opera semiseria is late Donizetti, composed a good ten years after the popular L’elisir d’amore, a work whose charm it emulates, though its score is less consistently inspired. A huge success at its 1842 premiere in Vienna, Linda never completely disappeared from the international repertoire, and ought to be seriously considered by British opera houses. Serafin conducts a great performance, with a first-rate all-Italian cast of Fifties favourites.