Alagna 2.0

A few years back, following the infamous 'Radames incident' at La Scala, Roberto Alagna seemed to be vocally tired. Many critics were busy making sarcastic comments about his flirt with crossover, insisting that his best singing years were long behind us...

Alagna as Rodrigue in Le Cid produced at Opéra Marseille [photo R. Terzian]

Whatever the routine change Roberto's made in his vocal training, the result is that he definitely regained the full beauty of his voice [In your face critics!]

The other day we could see on Mezzo TV the premiere of a new production of Le Cid --a rarely staged opera by Massenet-- live broadcast from Marseille, with Roberto in the role of Rodrigue.

Apart from being a rarity, the show itself was totally uninteresting: the stage design was good but most of the stage action was reduced to a bunch of people standing and pointlessly staring at Rodrigue, Chimène and the King (excellent Franco Pomponi btw), just like in the pic above. In short: Naive met uninspiring!

However, Alagna actually made the evening interesting as he sang one of his best roles so far (and the role is very tough). There are in fact two famous arias in that opera, one of which is "O Souverain, Ô Juge, Ô Père" that Roberto killed that night. See video below.