Roberto Alagna (tenor)
Roberto Alagna 60
Morphing Chamber Orchestra/Giorgio Croci
rec. 2024, Casino Baumgarten, Vienna, Austria
Sung texts enclosed but no translations
Reviewed as MP3 download
Aparté AP351 [85]
“Roberto Alagna 60” shows that the tenor has been on the operatic arena for quite some time now – since 1988, in fact, when he made his debut as Alfredo in La traviata, aged 25. He had been singing long before that, however, as a teen-age pop-singer and cabaret artist. The earliest influence was Mario Lanza, and he pays tribute to him by including Brodszky’s Be My Love among the half-dozen popular songs that conclude this disc. Indeed, the recordings of Lanza and other tenors remained his principal voice teachers, since he was basically self-taught. His longevity as an opera singer – 35 years and counting – is in itself a tribute to his own technique.
Alagna treats us to a long and varied programme, singing in Italian, French, German, Polish, Russian, Spanish and English and stylistically spanning the late baroque (Pergolesi) to Wagner. His willingness to take on new roles is also mirrored in his choices of repertoire here, which includes a couple of real rarities.
What struck me from the very beginning was his vocal health. The recordings were made in March this year, and one might expect some signs of vocal decline in a tenor past sixty – but there is very little of that. Gabriele’s aria from Simon Boccanegra is delivered with intensity, drama and power – seemingly at the limit of his vocal resources, but the tone is firm, there is no sign of an unwanted vibrato, and he has the soft nuances as well – just like the good old days. He sings the high C in the Faust aria securely at mezza voce, in Chapelou’s Mes amis from Le postillion de Lonjumeau he nails the high D, and his trill is in order. He impresses greatly in the two arias from Lohengrin with a masterly diminuendo in In fernem Land and beautiful legato in Mein Lieber Schwan. The preceding aria from Flotow’s Martha, sung in the original German, is sung glowingly but lacks lyrical warmth; it sounds too much like Wagner.
That he includes an aria by the father of Polish national opera, Stanislaw Moniuszko, is interesting but quite logical since his wife Alexandra Kurzak is Polish. The aria is beautiful, and the singing sounds authentic – even though my knowledge of Polish is limited – and this is a fine addition to the fairly meagre Polish repertoire in my collection. Continuing the Slavonic line, Alagna gives a very deeply felt reading of Lensky’s sad aria from Eugene Onegin, sung before the duel with Onegin, when Lensky has a premonition of his imminent death. Alagna doesn’t seem to have sung the role on stage, but his nuanced reading of the aria makes me hope to hear him in a complete recording. In fact, this is one of the best tracks on this disc, possibly challenged only by the third Slavonic piece, the Indian guest’s beautiful aria from Rimsky-Korsakov’s exotic Sadko.
Another rarity is Sextus’ aria from Gounod’s penultimate opera Polyeucte from 1978. The premiere was a flop, and the opera has rarely been revived – “The sorrow of my life”, wrote Gounod later. But the aria is well worth an occasional outing, and Alagna obviously revels in the music, offering a beautiful final note sung falsetto. Thomas’ Mignon is better-known; the opera is possibly his best and still played, and it is brim-full with lovely music, but to my knowledge hasn’t had a complete recording since 1977 with Marilyn Horne and Alain Vanzo in the leading roles. Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots is another of the successes from the 19th century that fell out of fashion during the 20th century and has only relatively lately recovered. The problem is the large cast required and the difficulty of finding suitable singers for the leading roles – not least that of Raoul, written for the legendary Adolphe Nourrit, which is notoriously demanding for its high-lying tessitura. In recent times there have been recordings with Richard Leech and Michael Spyres, but Roberto Alagna also seems to have the measure for this voice-killer, and handles it with elegance – very impressively, indeed.
At the other end of the scale he attempts an aria from Pergolesi’s Lo frate ‘nnamorato. He sings it simply and lightly, maybe not quite to the satisfaction of partisans of the HIP-movement, but “ordinary” opera lovers will not complain.
Alagna has often successfully returned to the light music genre that was the bread and butter of his youth. The first of his discs with I reviewed for MusicWeb was an homage to Luis Mariano, a French tenor singing mainly light music and operettas who was enormously popular in France in the middle of the 20th century. As a generous appendix to the main programme, there are seven pieces of light music. Here, he avoids the most obvious – no O sole mio and the like – but he opens with Riccardo Drigo’s Sérénade from Les Millions d’Arlequin, an old favourite from my youth that I hadn’t heard for ages. Instead of Leoncavallo’s hackneyed Mattinata, we get the elegant and charming French language serenade Au clair de la lune. Alagna has in fact recorded this piece before, together with his two guitarist brothers David and Frédérico on an album titled “Serenades”. The Neapolitan amateur composer Vincenzo di Chiara had one great success, and that was La Spagnola, which was recorded by ,the Metropolitan star Rosa Ponselle and became a world hit. Osmán Pérez Freire was Chilean but moved to Argentina and later settled in Spain. Hissole hit became the seductive Ay, Ay, Ay, a popular show piece for tenors, once in the mid-1930s recorded by the young Jussi Björling. Roberto Alagna’s two brothers, mentioned above, are also composers, and L’Andalouse, charming and lively, is a potential hit. I have already mentioned his tribute to Mario Lanza, Be my Love and as grand finale he sings his own Sognare, another piece with schlager potential. It is a mighty jubilant crescendo. Maybe, on second thought, the programme becomes a bit too overwhelming, as there is a certain lack of subtlety – but on the other hand the vitality and joy of the singing are so compelling that one capitulates – and one needn’t play the programme from beginning to end in one sitting. The cooperation between the voice and the orchestra is ideal and you can tell that conductor Giorgio Croci and Alagna have worked together for thirty years.
Göran Forsling
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Contents
1. GIUSEPPE VERDI
Simon Boccanegra: “O inferno!… Sento avvampar” (Gabriele)
2. CHARLES GOUNOD
Faust CG 4: “Salut ! Demeure chaste et pure” (Faust)
3. ADOLPHE ADAM
Le postillon de Lonjumeau: “Mes amis, écoutez l’histoire” (Chapelou)
4. FRIEDRICH VON FLOTOW
Martha: “Ach! so fromm” (Lyonel)
5. RICHARD WAGNER
Lohengrin WWV 75: “In fernem Land, unnahbar euren Schritten” (Lohengrin)
6. RICHARD WAGNER
Lohengrin WWV 75: “Mein lieber Schwan” (Lohengrin)
7. STANISŁAW MONIUSZKO
Halka: “Szumią jodły na gór szczycie” (Jontek)
8. PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
Eugene Onegin Op. 24, TH. 5: “Kuda, kuda, kuda vi udalilis” (Lenski)
9. NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Sadko: “Les diamants chez nous sont innombrables” (L’Indien/The Indian Guest)
10. CHARLES GOUNOD
Polyeucte CG 11: “Nymphes attentives” (Sextus)
11. AMBROISE THOMAS
Mignon: “Adieu, Mignon !” (Wilhelm)
12. GIACOMO MEYERBEER
Les Huguenots: “ Plus blanche que la blanche hermine” (Raoul)
13. GIOVANNI BATTISTA PERGOLESI Lo frate ‘nnamorato: “Ogni pena cchiù spietata” (Ascanio)
14. RICCARDO DRIGO
Les Millions d’Arlequin: Sérénade
15. RUGGERO LEONCAVALLO
Au clair de la lune (Sérénade française)
16. VINCENZO DI CHIARA
La Spagnola
17. OSMÁN PEREZ FREIRE
Ay, Ay, Ay
18. DAVID & FREDERICO ALAGNA
L’Andalouse
19. NICHOLAS BRODSZKY
Be My Love
20. ROBERTO ALAGNA
Sognare
