![]() ![]() Seldom in the opera’s 100-year-plus history at the Met can this music have been more elegantly played, the instrumental textures so sensitively mixed, the melodic shapes so delicately tapered, or the dramatic pacing so effectively judged. ![]() Working to their advantage is the conductor, Bertrand de Billy, who makes an impressive debut. Now the lovebirds appear as a team whenever possible, currently at the Met in – what else? – Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Among his recently acquired assets is the glamorous Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu (another pet of the British), whom he married soon after the Bohème fiasco. Singers more highly touted than Alagna have arrived at the Met only to fall on their faces and never recover, but this tenor keeps trying. Worse, the tenor was in poor voice, and the fans let him know it. When Alagna made his Met debut as Rodolfo in La Bohème two seasons ago, he was foolishly overhyped by his record label, EMI Classics, which promoted him as a heartthrob poster boy, opera’s own Leonardo DiCaprio. Poor judgment and bad luck are at least in part to blame. Since he sings more or less the same operatic repertory as his celebrated predecessors, Roberto Alagna has been inevitably compared to them, but so far, his New York reception has failed to equal the acclaim he gets abroad, especially in England. What we’re talking about here is a trio from the younger generation – Roberto Alagna, Ben Heppner, and Ian Bostridge, three tenors unlikely to join forces as a glitzy pop group (although the prospect is intriguing) but whose individual careers can only continue upward. Three noted tenors passed through town recently – no, not those three tenors, although at the Met, Plácido Domingo was finishing up a run of Samson et Dalila while Luciano Pavarotti took what surely must be one last crack at an old signature role, Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore.
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