Roberto Alagna

Roberto Alagna

MANON LESCAUT - Puccini - New York

 

About Opera

Manon Lescaut

Drame lyrique en quatre actes de Giacomo Puccini

livret de Luigi Illica, Giuseppe Giacosa et Marco Praga, d’après le livre de l'Abbé Prévost

l'éditeur Giulio Ricordi et le compositeur lui-même contribuèrent à la création du livret.

créé le 1er février au Teatro regio de Turin

 

 

 

Performing

12 février 2016*

15 février 2016

18 février 2016

27 février 2016*

01 mars 2016*

05 mars 2016**

08 mars 2016

11 mars 2016

 

 * Radio live Broadcasted on Sirius

** Met HD Live programm (cinema)

 

Cast

 

 

Manon Lescaut : Kristin Opolais

Lescaut : Massimo Cavaletti

Chevalier Renato Des Grieux : Roberto Alagna

Geronte di Ravoir : Brindley Sherratt

 

 Metropolitan Opera Chor and Orchestra

Conductor : Fabio Luisi

 

 

 

 

Metropolitan Opera Announcement

CAST UPDATE | PAGLIACCI > MANON LESCAUT | Due to a cancellation announced today, The Metropolitan Opera is updating the cast of its current and forthcoming productions. As a consequence, Roberto Alagna is CHANGING HIS AGENDA and will perform - for the first time onstage - the male lead in Puccini's "MANON LESCAUT " for 9 performances from February 12 to March 11, 2016. 
 
In order to prepare the role of Chevalier Des Grieux and this short notice and unanticipated stage debut, he will withdraw from his commitment to sing the role of Canio in the Met’s ongoing production of PAGLIACCI. 
 
Directed by Richard Eyre, this production of Manon Lescaut is a collaboration between the Met and the Baden Baden Festival, where it premiered in 2014. Roberto Alagna will appear alongside Kristine Opolais in the title role, conducted by Fabio Luisi. 
 
PERFORMANCE DATES are given below. Radio live broadcasted on SIRIUS on Feb 12, Feb. 24, March 1st, and part of the Met HD live program (CINEMA) on March 5, 2016
 

Press Review

 

The New York Times - Michael Cooper - 

"Better call Roberto: Alagna steps in to Manon Lescaut"  Check out the article published today explaining "how Roberto Alagna learned Manon Lescaut in two weeks"

  
The tenor Roberto Alagna was sleeping the morning after singing “Pagliacci” at the Metropolitan Opera last month when the company’s general manager, Peter Gelb, telephoned with a potential crisis on his hands. Jonas Kaufmann, one of the biggest stars in opera, had just withdrawn from a coming new production of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut.” Would Mr. Alagna step in?
 
“My first thought was to say no,” Mr. Alagna recalled in a recent interview. He had never sung the role and had only partly learned it a decade ago for a run of performances in Turin, Italy, that he had ended up canceling. And he would have just 16 days to nail it before opening night, which arrives this Friday.
 
But Mr. Gelb was desperate for some tenorial glamour to salvage a high-profile production that had been conceived as a vehicle for Mr. Kaufmann and the compelling soprano Kristine Opolais, and which was to be shown on March 5 in cinemas around the world.
 
In the end, Mr. Alagna agreed to take on the high-stakes challenge — the latest chapter in a 32-year singing career that has been operatic in more than one sense of the word. It has taken him from singing in pizzerias and cabarets in France, where he was raised in a family of Sicilian immigrants, to being sold as a “the fourth tenor” while still in his 20s, to being widowed at a young age with a young daughter, to his very public marriage to the diva Angela Gheorghiu and their bitter, just-as-public divorce. A low point in his stage career came in 2006 when, after being booed during a performance of “Aida” at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, he simply walked out mid-performance.
 
But Mr. Alagna is in a new phase these days. Having survived the hype of his early career and a sometimes tumultuous private life, he has matured as an artist and, at 52, has recently been earning some of his best reviews in years. He and his third wife, the soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, recently moved to Poland with their 2-year-old daughter, Malena.
The race to learn “Manon Lescaut” has not been easy. “It was impossible for me to sleep for two weeks,” Mr. Alagna said in his dressing room at the Met, where a stroller was parked next to the piano bench and Ms. Kurzak popped in at one point to change Malena’s diaper.
 
After withdrawing from his remaining performances as the homicidally jealous clown in the “Pagliacci” revival to devote himself to becoming the tragic lover des Grieux in the new “Manon Lescaut,” he began working 12 hours a day — studying the score at home; working on it with John Fisher, the Met’s director of music administration; and rehearsing constantly.
The director of the production, Richard Eyre, said that at the first stage rehearsals Mr. Alagna sat to the side, singing from a score, while his understudy went through the motions. Then Mr. Eyre and Mr. Alagna would go to a rehearsal room to work on the blocking.
 
“By the end of the week, when we had a dress rehearsal with piano, he had really inhabited the production and the role,” said Mr. Eyre, who directed Mr. Alagna in “Carmen” a few years ago. “So apart from the fact that I think he’s wonderful in the role, it’s just an extraordinary feat of memory, technique and appetite.”
 
Mr. Eyre said that such last-minute switches, common in opera, were “pretty well unknown in the theater world,” where he spent much of his career. “I wouldn’t say I’m used to it, but I try not to panic,” he said. “I try not to infect my colleagues with my concerns. And in the case of Roberto, the moment he said yes, I thought, If Roberto thinks he can do it, then he can do it — and we don’t have to worry.”
By stepping in at the last minute, Mr. Alagna helped bail out the Met. When Mr. Kaufmann canceled, citing illness, it marked the second season in a row that he had withdrawn from his Met appearances. And this time, he was leaving a production that had been, to a large degree, planned around the pairing of him and Ms. Opolais. This month’s Playbills, which were already printed when Mr. Kaufmann withdrew, have no fewer than three articles exploring the two singers’ expected chemistry.
 
Mr. Gelb said that as soon as Mr. Kaufmann made his announcement, he thought immediately of Mr. Alagna, who will also join Ms. Opolais in “Madama Butterfly” later this season. “He was absolutely at the top of my list,” he said.
 
It will be the fifth new production Mr. Alagna has starred in at the Met, though he said he had not been counting — and explained why. “When I was a teenager, my mom wanted me to be an accountant,” he said in his French-accented English. “I remember I was working cabaret in the night, because it was my passion, and during the day I was working for one year like an accountant. And when I stopped that, I said, ‘Now I will never count nothing!’”
 
Now, he said, he is looking forward to raising Malena with Ms. Kurzak and trying to arrange their careers so they can all be in the same place at the same time. And he is looking forward to the birth of his first grandchild: His daughter Ornella is expecting a baby.
 

Opéra Magazine - Patrice Henriot  - May 2016

"The central couple Manon/Des Grieux delivers a first-rate performance. Resounding success. " 
 
"Roberto Alagna jumps valiantly into a role which his singing serves in all aspects, from the initial offhandedness ("Tra voi, belle") to the climax of despair ("No! Pazzo son!"), through an ideal lyricism in proclamation ("Donna non vidi mai") until the outraged burst ("O tentatrice!"). The most French of contemporary tenors appears at the Met as the great major and revered advocate of the Italian repertoire. [...] Resounding success of the whole. 
 
 

MANON LESCAUT (02/12/2016) | REVIEW by Bryan Buttler for phillymag.com - Bryan Buttler - 02/15/2016

"Manon Lescaut is a triumph"

 
EXCERPT: "The fabulous French tenor Roberto Alagna, was a last-minute replacement [in this] production. However, Mr. Alagna was excellent, and the Met even went so far as to include a special addition to the program thanking him for taking on the part. The strongest vocal moments came when Alagna and Opolais soared in their Puccini duets throughout the evening, and the scene where both characters are reunited in act two was nothing short of remarkable. [...]The ending, bleak and unforgettable, affirms why we go to the theater, the opera: To experience human emotion on a grand and epic scale."
 
 

Classicalvoiceamerica.org -  Leslie Kandell -  02/17/2016

 "Soaring phrases, belted high notes, caressed fermata ... it was Alagna's night"

EXCERPT : "[...] The best of those surprises was the precipitous role debut of tenor Roberto Alagna as the Chevalier des Grieux, stepping in for Jonas Kaufmann. Amazingly, this is the fourth last-minute bailout Alagna has performed at the Met in his career. He deserved the printed program insert praising his “ongoing heroics.” Skipping his last scheduled appearance as Canio in I Pagliacci (at General Manager Peter Gelb’s urging), Alagna crammed for des Grieux and dominated the role. It’s in his Fach — the soaring phrases, the belted high notes, the caressed fermata; it calls to mind the fact that this role was one of Caruso’s. Once Alagna is more at ease with the staging, he can take this one to the bank. [...] Among the men, it was Alagna’s night. His “rescue” performance paid off for himself and the production. That surprise was a nice one."
 
 
MANON LESCAUT (02/15/2016) | REVIEW by Wilborn Hampton for The Huffington Post (02/16/2016) "Excellent performance; real chemistry; a great feat, remarkable and happy for Met audiences"
 
EXCERPT : "Puccini poured passion, longing, and despair into the score, and Opolais and Alagna deliver excellent performances that bring out every nuance. Their duets are tender and touching, and each shines in individual arias, Opolais especially in her second act "In quelle trine morbide" and her final "Sola, perduta, abandonata," and Alagna is his opening "Donna non vidi mai." [...]
 
The roles of Manon and des Grieux have been a magnet for the great singers of the past. Kirsten, Albanese, Tebaldi, and Scotto all performed the title role at the Met, and Callas memorably recorded it though she never sang it onstage. And Caruso, Bjorling, Tucker, and Domingo have taken on des Grieux.
 
Opolais and Alagna can add their names to the list of Met duos who have mastered the parts. There is real chemistry between them, and given the circumstances [a withdrawal at the last minute] that brought Alagna to the stage for this new production, that is no small feat. Peter Gelb, the Met's always resourceful general manager, prevailed on Alagna to forgo his remaining performances as Canio in Pagliacci and step into des Grieux in Manon Lescaut, a role he had never sung onstage, on just 16 days notice. It is a remarkable feat and a happy one for Met audiences as well as those who see the production in theaters around the world."
 

Gallery

 



07/12/2017