Someone should write a biography of Domenico Barbaia, the larger-than-life impresario whose management of the opera houses in Naples, Vienna and Milan did so much for the careers of Rossini and many other composers. It was Barbaia who commissioned Il pirata for La Scala, Milan, on the strength of Bellini’s first professionally produced opera, Bianca e Fernando. The premiere in October 1827 was swiftly followed by productions elsewhere in Europe (including Vienna and Naples, natch) and in New York, after which little is heard of the opera until its revival in 1958 with Maria Callas.

The libretto was by Felice Romani, with whom Bellini was to collaborate on all his subsequent operas except for the last, I puritani. The setting is 13th-century Sicily and the story is a prototype for many subsequent Italian operas, with its love triangle, mad scene and suicide. As in Verdi’s Otello, the action begins with a violent storm as spectators on the shore anxiously watch the progress of a ship attempting to land. The sailors, who are rescued, are a band of pirates led by Gualtiero, the former Count of Montaldo. He is heartbroken to discover that, during his 10-year exile, his lover Imogene has been forced to marry his mortal enemy Ernesto, the Duke of Caldora, by whom she has had a son. Gualtiero kills Ernesto in a duel; Imogene loses her wits; Gualtiero stabs himself.

There are numbers in the score that will amuse or irritate, according to your tolerance of ottocento opera. There’s a chorus for the pirates in Act 1, in an entirely appropriate 6/8; but the same jauntiness is to be heard at the beginning of Act 2, where Adele and the ladies-in-waiting lament the death of Ernesto in a jolly march. On the other hand, the mad scene, with its reminiscence of Imogene’s cavatina and its expressive cor anglais and flute solos, shows real depth.

The original Gualtiero and Ernesto were Rubini and Tamburini, half of what became the famous Puritani quartet. José Bros, a little white-toned in places, copes very well with the high tessitura; Ludovic Tézier is superb, conveying tenderness as well as jealousy and fury. Carmen Giannattasio makes a wonderful Imogene: her cabaletta, ‘Sventurata, anch’io deliro’, suggests that she will triumph as Norma one day. Another success for Opera Rara.