Roberto Alagna

REVIEW TURANDOT 8/07/2017 at the Royal Opera House | "Meeting the challenge with consumate ease, impressing with his technical security, strong, full, bronze-toned tenor, Alagna was the revelation of the evening and leads a wonderful cast. " by Jim Pritchard for www.seenandheard-international.com.

 

Read the full review > http://seenandheard-international.com/2017/07/alagna-leads-a-wonderful-cast-in-the-16th-revival-of-andrei-serbans-covent-garden-turandot/

 

EXCERPT : "I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. [...] Roberto Alagna’s Calaf was the revelation of the evening for me. I have seen some fine performances on screen recently from him, but that is not the same as hearing a truly great singer live. (Maybe next time we can hear him in Keith Warner’s new Otello and it will probably be even better?) Calaf demands a spinto tenor with the reserves to leap to sudden high Bs and Cs; a challenge which Alagna met with consummate ease. He brought considerable vocal refinement to ‘Non piangere Liù’ and impressed with his technical security, strong, full, bronze-toned tenor. To add the extra frisson, we had a singer with his real-life wife on stage with him. Had Ettinger not pressed on as usually is the case after Alagna’s viscerally exciting ‘Nessun dorma’, it would have been a showstopper. As it was, the Saturday afternoon audience still burst into a few seconds of well-deserved, spontaneous applause."

 

"Turandot is a problematical opera, from some processions and some ceremonial dancers very little does actually happen: Calaf, Turandot, Liù and Timur just walk on, around each other, or off, as appropriate. They always seem to me stock, one-dimensional, operatic characters and perhaps this was part of the problem Puccini had in finishing Turandot. Not even Plácido Domingo or Gwyneth Jones made anything of them in Los Angeles in July 1984, I understand, and nor did Ernesto Veronelli and Ghena Dimitrova, who I saw at Covent Garden a couple of months later. Occasionally singers ditch the original makeup and production. Here Roberto Alagna’s Calaf was not as white-faced as some of his predecessors; and he also brought back wonderful memories of the eccentric Franco Bonisolli – who did the exact same in 1988 – when he locked lips during a full-on assault of Turandot during the final scene. Its ended with them in a clinch on the floor of the stage and I don’t think that was in the original production, but it will look great when a performance is seen on the BP Big Screens on 14 July."