‘In my Eden a person who dislikes Bellini has the good manners not to get born,’ wrote W.H. Auden in his poem ‘Vespers’ (1954). Like much of Auden’s table-talk, this may seem rather extreme, but those who attended last Thursday’s concert version of Vincenzo Bellini’s I Puritani may have gone away with similarly exclusive thoughts.

Though it was a cold night in Melbourne, Hamer Hall was almost full for this single performance by Victorian Opera. Opportunities to enjoy Bellini’s tenth and final opera are few in Australia. The Victorian State Opera performed it in 1986, with Jenny Drivala as a suitably loopy Elvira, and Keith Lewis, such an elegant tenor but defeated on that occasion by Arturo’s impossible music. One year earlier, Joan Sutherland had sung Elvira in Sydney – the only time she performed the role in Australia.