For gorgeous melody, spellbinding coloratura, and virtuoso vocal fireworks, I Puritani has few equals. Elvira and Arturo are brought together by love and torn apart by the political rifts of the English Civil War. The opera's depiction of madness - both in individuals and in communities - is extraordinary: The opera suggests that the veneer of sanity can slip away at any moment, that madness can plunge a person into a destructive abyss.