Review - Roberto Alagna: All’Opera

Mark Pullinger
Friday, November 29, 2024

Mark Pullinger enjoys a survey of the ever-youthful tenor’s EMI recordings

Roberto Alagna: recommendable in French and Italian repertoire, especially Donizetti and Puccini (photography: Alex von Koettlitz)
Roberto Alagna: recommendable in French and Italian repertoire, especially Donizetti and Puccini (photography: Alex von Koettlitz)

It’s scarcely possible that French-Sicilian tenor Roberto Alagna turned 60 last year. It seems only yesterday that he was vaulting fences as Roméo in 1994, the first time I saw him at Covent Garden. When he sang a swaggering Turiddu at the same address last year, he was still sounding great, if his tenor is now more bronzed.

For the first half of his career, Alagna recorded for EMI, so Warner has – somewhat tardily – issued a bumper box containing his complete opera recordings for them: 13 opera sets from 1992-2002, plus Massenet’s épisode lyrique, the brief, 40-minute La Navarraise, recorded much later in 2011 and (curiously) 2017.

The tale of Alagna’s EMI career isn’t entirely told in Sylvain Fort’s gushing booklet note. There’s a massive elephant in the room, entirely unacknowledged: the raison d’être for the majority of these recordings was Alagna’s marriage to Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu. They wed in 1996 (officiated by New York mayor Rudy Giuliani) but had tied the knot on disc the year before (Roméo et Juliette).

‘Bobby and Ange’ were a brand. Indeed, the first two operas Alagna recorded – L’elisir d’amore (Erato) and La bohème (EMI) – were swiftly re-recorded with Gheorghiu for Decca before she jumped ship and joined him at EMI. In just seven years (1995-2002) they recorded 10 complete operas together, eight of which feature in this box. (In 2009, around the time of their divorce, they taped Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz for DG.)

Inevitably, some of these flatter one partner more than the other. Carmen and Charlotte suit Gheorghiu far less than Don José and Werther suit Alagna, whereas Manrico (Il trovatore) was a bit of a push for him back in 2001. But when they both hit form, the results were often golden.

Puccini was a particularly happy hunting ground, all conducted by Antonio Pappano. La rondine is probably the best on disc, and they make a charming Lauretta and Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi (credit to Warner for including the complete Trittico here, even though they only have a walk-on part in Il tabarro and are absent – naturally enough in the case of Alagna – from Suor Angelica).

They are perfectly paired in Tosca, one of Gheorghiu’s best stage roles, while Alagna’s tenor gleams as Cavaradossi. Ruggero Raimondi isn’t an ideal Scarpia, but it’s terrifically enjoyable. The pre-Gheorghiu Bohème features Alagna as an ardent Rodolfo opposite another Romanian soprano, Leontina Vaduva, as a charming Mimì. Thomas Hampson, Simon Keenlyside and Samuel Ramey aren’t exactly idiomatic as Alagna’s housemates, though (I prefer the Chailly La Scala Decca remake).

In French repertoire, Alagna sang with heady freedom in his youth as Roméo, a wonderful recording from Toulouse under Michel Plasson, and des Grieux (with Gheorghiu and Pappano at La Monnaie). His Werther is a finely wrought reading, even if I prefer a mezzo Charlotte. Alagna does ‘tortured poet’ very well, as also heard in Kent Nagano’s Lyon recording of Les contes d’Hoffmann (Michael Kaye’s edition). Alagna is truly inside the role and is well supported by José van Dam as the four villains. The heroines are cast separately: Natalie Dessay sparkles as Olympia and Vaduva is a lovely Antonia, but Sumi Jo is miscast as Giulietta in the Venetian act.

Dessay appears opposite Alagna in Lyon again in a fine account of the French version of Donizetti’s Lucie de Lammermoor conducted by Evelino Pidò. Her Lucie is lighter voiced, in the Lily Pons tradition, while Alagna’s Edgard is a touch throaty. Ludovic Tézier oozes class as Henri.

Verdi’s Don Carlos comes in French, a recommendable account under Pappano, although not as complete an edition as others on disc. Alagna exudes élan in the title-role, and the cast includes Hampson as a noble Marquis de Posa and Karita Mattila as a dignified Elisabeth de Valois. Van Dam’s Philippe is vocally grey but plausible. Alas, Waltraud Meier’s Eboli is uneven.

Alagna’s first opera on disc was a favourite Donizetti role: Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore. In the 1992 Marcello Viotti recording, he captures the innocence of the country bumpkin who adores Mariella Devia’s Adina. But the Decca remake with Gheorghiu, based on a run of performances in Lyon, is even more fun. Elisir has been a lucky opera for Alagna; it was performing it in London in 2012 that he met his future wife, Aleksandra Kurzak.

And it’s Kurzak who pops up opposite Alagna in La Navarraise. It was recorded in New York in 2011, so I’m assuming the 2017 sessions (New York and London) were to patch her in.

The recordings

All’Opera

Roberto Alagna (Warner Classics)

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