This is very much a single-star recording. There are five other versions of I puritani in the current catalogue, and all spread their claims upon the listener more broadly than this. Take away Gruberova and the heavens are bare indeed; moreover, it is some time before she herself shines quite as she was wont to do. With ''Son vergin vezzosa'' comes reassurance: the voice rings out, the scales are fluent, the singing never being simply a matter of a concert performance but a dramatic experience too. The elegiac tone of ''O vieni al tempio'' and later the sighed ''O rendetemi la speme'' have the touching pathos of her Lucia and Violetta, and in ''Vien, diletto'' she gives not only a brilliant display of virtuosity but an imaginative expression of the 'ecstasy' for which the composer asks. Occasionally the highest notes seem more of an effort than they used to; sometimes (as in the ''soave'' of ''Qui la voce sua soave'') the focus is loosened. But it is still a star performance coming through bright and steadfast, indefatigable and triumphant.
Unfortunately in this context, I puritani is a four-star opera. It needs a basso cantante with some richness and beauty of tone, more at any rate than the dull-sounding Francesco Ellero d'Artegna has to offer. The role of Riccardo presents some of the great opportunities for baritone. and certainly Ettore Kim makes the most of those that arise for a prolonged final high A flat; but the vibrato is not tight enough to be an excitingly dramatic feature and it spoils the texture of his tone. Justin Lavender comes into his own in Act 3. singing ''A una fonte'' and ''Corre a valle'' gracefully. In ''Credeasi, misera'' (offering D flat but not F) he gives generously of spirit and perhaps too generously of voice but the passage needs more still and so does ''A te, o cara'', which is well phrased but unimaginatively shaped. For this, the conductor Fabio Luisi may also be responsible, though the orchestral playing itself is generally fine. The recording is taken from a live performance, which brings inevitable limitations and yet it should have been possible to give more immediacy to the chorus and more sharpness of detail to the recording as a whole. For readers who still need a Puritani but would prefer something less 'standard' than the obvious choices of the 1953 Callas or Caballe (both EMI, 4/89) or Sutherland (Decca, 4/89), may I suggest the Nuova Era recording, live from Catania, with Devia and Matteuzzi under Bonynge.'