Roberto Alagna Prestige Concerts

ROBERTO ALAGNA TENOR

​Everywhere, the greatest venues and festivals dedicated to lyrical art welcome him, from the Paris National Opera to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, via the Royal Opera House in London, the Chorégies d'Orange, La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Staatsoper or the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. In 30 years of career, he has included in his repertoire more than sixty roles: Alfredo, Calaf, Canio, Cavaradossi, Don Carlo(s), Don Jose, Faust, Manrico, Maurizio, Nemorino, Otello, Radames, Rodolfo, Romeo, Ruggero, Turiddu, Werther... So many performances that have made Roberto Alagna the most famous French tenor in the world. He also enjoys exploring and serving lesser-known works, through productions, concerts or recordings such as Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame, Le Cid or La Navarraise by Massenet, Fiesque by Lalo, Francesca da Rimini by Zandonaï, Gianni Schicchi by Puccini, Le Roi Arthus by Chausson or L'Enfant prodigue by Debussy... He also sings Vasco da Gama by Meyerbeer, the critical edition of L'Africaine, rarely performed. In 2017 at the Metropolitan Opera, he reprised a flamboyant Cyrano de Bergerac by Alfano in its original version of 1935 (referred to as the "Alagna version" on the score reissued by Ricordi). Two contemporary operas were even composed for him, Marius et Fanny after Marcel Pagnol by Vladimir Cosma and Le Dernier jour d'un condamné after Victor Hugo: a work composed by David Alagna on a libretto by Roberto and Frédérico Alagna and staged for the first time in France in 2014, then released on DVD.

A PROLIFIC DISCOGRAPHY, A FERTILE ECLECTICISM

​A true lover of an immoderate number of roles and the genius of their composers, he has an impressive discography, reflecting his insatiable lyrical curiosity. Under exclusive contract with EMI (1993-2004) then with Deutsche Grammophon (2005-2017), he signed with Sony Classical in 2017. With recordings for Erato, Sony, EMI, Warner and Deutsche Grammophon over the last 10 years, his discography is one of the most extensive in existence and covers a wide range: complete works, duets, oratorios, collections of great lyrical works, operas, sacred arias, songs... Credo, Viva Opéra, Airs de Berlioz, Bel canto, Robertissimo, Luis Mariano, Sicilien, Pasión are some of the many albums that make up his catalogue, representing millions of copies sold and reflecting the musical eclecticism of his career. He received a warm welcome for his recital released at the end of 2014, Ma Vie est un Opéra, a moving recital of arias and duets illustrating his life and career in the manner of an opera libretto. In the fall of 2016, he offered seven original songs in the album Malèna as well as great Neapolitan standards carefully revisited. In October 2018, his first album of duets entirely dedicated to Puccini, Puccini in Love, was released, recorded at Sony with the soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, as well as a recording of Massenet's La Navarraise at Warner Classics. A new solo album Caruso 1873 – a tribute to the great Neapolitan tenor Enrico Caruso – was released at the end of 2019 by Sony Classical. In the summer of 2020, marked by the health crisis and its restrictions, he imagined and recorded Le Chanteur, a variety album with jazz and swing colors, entirely dedicated to the beautiful and great French Chanson. He participates alongside Aleksandra Kurzak and Andreas Scholl in the recording of Arvo Pärt's Stabat Mater which will be released in October 2022 by Aparté.

​A STRONG APPETITE FOR RESEARCH AND CREATION

​Off the beaten track, constantly exploring new styles and ideas – on record, on stage and on tour, Roberto Alagna clearly reveals his desire to give more to his audience and to feed his appetite for study and creation. The musical eclecticism that has always been dear to the tenor's heart is the fertile legacy of his roots. As of all the path he has traveled since his beginnings when, at the age of 17, singing in the evenings in Parisian cabarets, he met the Cuban double bass player and singer Rafaël Ruiz. He was his first singing teacher. A few years later, in 1988, he won the Pavarotti Competition in Philadelphia, giving a decisive boost to the career that he has since pursued at a sustained pace, almost instinctively, with a vitality and freshness that is constantly renewed.
Seduced by all aspects of singing, the tenor regularly makes incursions into popular music: on the fringes of a very dense operatic activity, he successfully asserts himself in the field of traditional song, a crossover between genres that he practices with the same commitment, the same generosity and sincerity, the same rigor and technical requirement. Without one ever being to the detriment of the other, but on the contrary one nourishing the other. His success in this area has made Roberto Alagna an authentically popular artist, loved by his audience, ever larger and more varied.
​From 2009, he has met with great success with his singing tours (Mariano, Sicilien, Pasión…). In 2013 his Little Italy tour, a show paying tribute to his origins and to Italian musical culture in all its variety, was a great success in more than fifteen French cities. In 2014, Roberto Alagna performed at the International Festival of Sacred Music of the World in Fez (Morocco), creating a stir with a unique show, Mediterraneo. Accompanied by an oriental instrumental ensemble, he mixed songs from the lyrical, sacred and traditional repertoires, at the crossroads of Western, Arab-Andalusian, Sicilian and Neapolitan influences. A DVD of the concert was released in 2015, accompanying his album Noël. In 2016, he brought a concert to Australia that mixed both great lyrical arias and popular songs, reflecting his musical culture. He has repeated the experience of creating such unique programs around the world more than once, displaying a unique ability to use his tenor instrument while remaining faithful to the style of what he is performing.
​In these stage performances - as in the creative work that accompanies them - Alagna finds a form of breathing space as well as new resources, and also gains a very special aura, rare in the lyrical world. His moving Marseillaise performed on July 14, 2005 at the foot of the presidential tribune on the Champs-Elysées remains in the memories. Also, the recital he gave in 2009 in the prestigious setting of the gardens of the Château de Versailles was another highlight winning the support of a wider audience. On this occasion, he brought nearly 8,000 people to listen to him perform famous arias from French opera but also to bring back to the forefront certain forgotten works from this repertoire, under the direction of his accomplice, the conductor Michel Plasson.

A COMPLETE ARTIST

Roberto
Alagna appears in many DVDs. The cinema also calls him. First with Tosca by Benoît Jacquot (2001), then Romeo and Juliet by Barbara Willis Sweete (2002). On stage as in these film-operas, Roberto Alagna gives full measure to his talents as an actor for which, in 1995, he had been distinguished with the Laurence Olivier prize for his London interpretation of Romeo. A British theatrical award very rarely awarded to an opera artist. Recently in May 2022, he made an appearance alongside Michèle Laroque and MB14 in the film Ténor by Claude Ziddi Jr., playing his own role.
Open
to innovative experiences, in the service of promoting lyrical art, Roberto Alagna regularly lends himself to the demanding exercise of live television or cinematographic broadcasts (in Orange, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in Vienna, etc.). Convinced of the importance of DVD in the future of recorded opera and the interest in breaking down barriers between artistic disciplines, he also works with his brothers David and Frédérico on original productions such as Orphée et Eurydice by Gluck, Cyrano de Bergerac by Alfano, Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, Werther by Massenet, etc. Released in early 2014, the DVD of this latest production remained ranked for nine consecutive weeks in the French music DVD sales rankings of all genres. Constantly
exploring He inspires books and documentary films. After telling his family saga in a first book (Je ne suis pas le fruit du hasard - Alagna/Mazingarbe, Ed. Grasset), he himself took up the pen in 2018 at the request of his friend Alain Duault to write his “intimate dictionary” (Mon dictionnaire intime – Alagna/Duault, Ed. Le Passeur). He completed his artistic experience by venturing once again into the popular “crossroads” between genres, beyond the opera stages: at the end of January 2023, he made his debut at the very beautiful and legendary Parisian venue of the Folies Bergère, playing the famous Al Capone, the title role of a musical show specially composed for him by Jean-Félix Lalanne.



 

From January 28, 2023, he plays Al Capone at the Folies Bergère and for 90 performances in the musical comedy by Jean-Félix Lalanne.
 

A communicative passion for voice and stage
 

Driven by his passion for the voice, he approaches his many projects with enthusiasm and serenity. His latest engagements demonstrate the full breadth of his repertoire. On the lyric stage, in recent years, he has further expanded it with several role takes, for example Des Grieux in Puccini's Manon Lescaut at the Metropolitan Opera, Azaël in Debussy's L'enfant prodigue in a concert version in Paris, Eleazar in Halévy's La Juive in Munich or Rodolfo in Luisa Miller in a concert version. KS Alagna made his debut as Samson in Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila in Vienna in 2018, opened the following season at the Metropolitan Opera with the work and reprised it at the Chorégies d'Orange in 2021. After singing his 100th performance at the Paris Opera in Otello , he also took to the stage of the Royal Opera House for the 100th time in May 2019, in Andrea Chenier . In early 2020 at the Metropolitan Opera, he returned in an acclaimed revival of La Bohème , 24 years later and 30 years after his debut as Rodolfo. In late 2020 in Berlin, he made a remarkable debut in the Wagnerian repertoire, in the title role of Lohengrin , which he reprised brilliantly in April 2022 in Berlin. In August 2021, he performed for the first time at the Verona Arena with two double performances in the roles of Turiddu and Canio. He will return there in August 2022 in Carmen . In early 2022, he performed in solo recitals at the Salle Gaveau and at the opening of UNESCO's Semaine du Son 2022 , of which he was the patron, then in duo recitals at the Bozar in Brussels and at the Philharmonie de Paris. At the same time, he was called by the Paris National Opera in Massenet's Manon and took up the challenge of returning to the role of the Chevalier, which he had not played for 11 years. He continued in New York with Tosca in March 2022. In July 2022, he was called by the Royal Opera House for Pagliacci . In the fall of 2022, he brilliantly opened the 2022/2023 season with a new role as Loris Ipanov in Umberto Giordano's Fedora , marking his big return to the stage of the Teatro Alla Scala, before joining the production of Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. At the end of January 2023, he made his debut at the Folies Bergère in Jean-Félix Lalanne's musical Al Capone , in which he played the title role for 45 performances.

After a series of solo and duo lyrical concerts in Zurich, Sofia, Tours, Athens, Las Palmas, Toulouse, Roberto Alagna is expected in the summer of 2023 on the open stage of the Arena di Verona in Tosca and Madama Butterfly , then next season, among new projects, in Cavalleria Rusticana at the Royal Opera House or Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera among others.


Jean Yves Ossonce

Director of the Tours Opera and the Orchestre Symphonique Région Centre-Tours from 1999 to 2016, he is a guest conductor, particularly abroad, in a wide lyrical and symphonic repertoire. Chabrier's "Briseis", Fauré's "Pénélope" at the Edinburgh Festival from 1994, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, Slovak Philharmonic, Seoul Arts Center for the local creation of "Damnation of Faust", Slovak Philharmonic, Hamburg Staatsoper, San Francisco Opera ("Lucia" in Graham Vick's production with Natalie Dessay), Minnesota Opera, Montreal Opera, Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Capitole de Toulouse, Angers-Nantes Opera, Avignon, Montpellier, Geneva ("l'Etoile" by Chabrier, last production by Jérôme Savary), Monte Carlo Opera ("Thaïs", directed by Jean-Louis Grinda, with Marina Rebeka and Ludovic Tézier), Beijing Opera (National Opera Center for "Samson et Dalila", directed by Hugo de Ana), and regular new productions at the Lausanne Opera ... At the invitation of Jean-Luc Choplin at the Châtelet, he created in France "Pastorale" by Gérard Pesson, "Il Postino" by Catan (with Placido Domingo), and "A Flowering Tree" by John Adams.
His activity as director and performer has been distinguished twice by the Claude-Rostand Prize (Best regional lyrical production): in 2008 and 2014 "Le Pays" by Ropartz and "Bérénice" by Magnard; The International Music Press awarded him the Antoine-Livio Prize (Musical Personality of the Year) in 2016. His discography includes "Briséis" by Chabrier, "le Pays" by Ropartz (Deutsches Schallplaten Preis), "le Coeur du Moulin" by Sévérac (Diapason d'Or, Diamant d'Opéra Magazine, Orphée d'Or from the Académie du Disque Lyrique), Ropartz's "3rd Symphony" (Orphée d'Or), the complete Suites by Massenet, the complete Symphonies by Magnard, the Piano Concertos by Massenet and Hahn.
Since 2014, he has been a Knight of the Legion of Honor, and since 2022, an Officer of Arts and Letters.

Program and cast

Program

Le Villi: “Torna ai felici di”
Edgar: “Orgia, chimera dall’occhio vitreo”
Le Villi: N. 1 Preludio (orchestra)
Manon Lescaut: “Tra voi belle, brune e bionde”
Manon Lescaut “Donna non vidi mai”
Manon Lescaut: Intermezzo (orchestra)
Manon Lescaut: “No! Pazzo sound! Guard”

La bohème: “Che gelida manina”
Tosca: “E lucevan le stelle”
Le Villi: Parte sinfonica N. 7 II Tempo “La Tregenda” (orchestra)
Madame Butterfly “Addio Fiorito asil”
La fianculla del West: “Ch'ella mi creda”
Suor Angelica: Intermezzo(orchestra)
Turandot: “Nessun dorma”

Interpreters

Column Orchestra

Jean Yves Ossonce, director

Roberto Alagna , tenor