Interview, Roberto Alagna at 60

The French-Sicilian tenor Roberto Alagna turned sixty last year, and marked the occasion by recording an album on Aparté which is essentially a potted musical autobiography - taking in some of the popular songs which he performed in his early days as a cabaret-singer as well as excerpts from Lohengrin (a role which he debuted just four years ago), 60 also includes arias from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Moniuszko's Halka and Adam's Le postillon de Lonjumeau as well as Alagna's own song 'Sognare'.

Having fallen in love with so much operatic repertoire through Alagna's recordings in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was a real pleasure to speak with him in depth last week about his unconventional route to a stellar career in opera, the pros and cons of being largely self-taught, why he regrets not getting started on Wagner earlier, and the changes which he's seen in the industry over the past forty years...

This album is a portrait of your life as a singer, starting well before your opera debut - so where did your story really begin?

Music is my life: it’s ingrained in my soul, and I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. At first I sang for friends in my city, and when I was fifteen I started working at a Sicilian pizzeria called Etna; at the beginning it was just me and my guitar, and later on I had two musicians with me. Then when I turned seventeen I got a job in cabaret. That was very different because I had a stage and a band, and the whole thing was more professional. It was very important for me, because I built my temperament and artistry in that environment. The cabaret was my conservatoire in a way, but more difficult because you have the audience so close to you – you have to control your face, not push so much that you don’t look handsome! And you learn to improvise, because something different can happen every night...

You also need a very large repertoire in different languages: when you’re singing for tourists you need to have a song or aria from every country! Then there’s the vocal stamina involved: when you’re singing from midnight to 6AM every day, you have to be careful. And from there I started doing pop-up galas with opera and operetta arias: sometimes in castles, sometimes in very small theatres. To me it felt like a natural continuation of the cabaret work. There’s no ‘great’ music and ‘small’ music - it’s all one.

This album reflects my temperament and tastes. Throughout my entire career I’ve loved discovering new operas and trying to get behind pieces that are unknown or perhaps not so well-loved. These days not so many people know Le postillon de Lonjumeau, and that’s also a reflection of my personality in that I’ve always liked challenges – this aria is usually done by young singers, and nailing the top D isn’t so easy when you’re 60! You have all the ingredients of the Alagna career over the years in that aria.

The programme also shows my love and respect for different genres: opera, popular songs and my own compositions. When I study Puccini or Verdi or Wagner I work very hard on the style, and it’s equally important when I’m singing 'Be My Love' or 'Ay, ay, ay!'. 

You made your opera debut in 1988, as Alfredo with Glyndebourne Touring Opera…

The truth is that it was a bit earlier! I actually made my debut in 1983, as Tonio in La fille du régiment. The Glyndebourne story came about when I met my manager Jean-Marie Poilvé – a great man, who died recently. He said ‘You know, Roberto, let’s make Glyndebourne your official debut’, and he was right because it was more prestigious. By that point I’d sung seven or eight roles, but often in very poor conditions: sometimes without chorus, sometimes with a very small orchestra. 

The settings may not have been the most glamorous, but by the time I got to Glyndebourne I had some interesting operas under my belt: Don Pasquale, Mignon, Dialogues des Carmélites, Saint-Saëns’s Ascanio, and Pergolesi’s Lo frate 'nnamorato (which is represented on the album). I also did some operetta, including one which was written under a pseudonym…it turned out that the composer’s real name was Georges Prêtre! Whenever our paths crossed later in my career, we’d sing snatches from my aria as a secret code between us!

Do you think that learning ‘on the job’ rather than going through the traditional conservatoire route has played a role in keeping your voice fresh and authentic?

I don’t know if that’s the secret, but so many great singers were essentially self-taught – Pavarotti, Del Monaco, Caruso, Corelli…The fact is that you receive something from nature, and the secret is to recognise that - sometimes people don’t accept their own voice and its unique qualities. But you must accept it and work to be as efficient as possible with your instrument. That’s the most important thing of all.

One strange thing about being self-taught is that you never know where you are in relation to your peers – I was always worried I was lagging behind, but in fact I wasn’t! In a conservatoire you maybe do two hours’ serious singing a week, but I was working my voice eight or ten hours a day! Yes, the hope is that you’ll be discovered, but you must be very self-critical – and if you can’t do that then you can’t be self-taught, because how else do you evolve? People often ask me if bad reviews make me sad: no, because even the harshest critic isn’t as tough as I am on myself. That’s the key to growing and improving, not just in singing but in life.

So you still read all your reviews?

Sure! You learn a lot, if it’s constructive criticism. Sometimes reviews are genuinely unfair, but you reach a point where you can recognise that and move on. Real reviews are so important: most critics aren’t being difficult just for the sake of it. When I get home from a performance or recording-session I analyse everything myself, going over what was good and what was not so good; that’s the key to keeping the voice in shape.

We also get a glimpse of Alagna the composer, in the form of your song 'Sognare': when did you write it?

It’s an incredible story. I composed it for the cabaret when I was twenty: the original lyrics were ‘Vent’ anni son passata…’ etc but now I’ve changed the words to ‘Gli’ anni…’ – many years have now passed! Today it’s become a bit like my personal 'My Way' – a song which I find very moving with its reference to ‘the final curtain’. And in a way 'Sognare' is the same: ‘I ask nothing of anybody, I just want to dream – I live for singing, and I am here to sing and not to judge or be judged’. I think that’s the motto of my life.

When I was invited to sing in a concert by Michael Jackson for the Children of Kosovo I chose this song and changed the lyrics to work for the children; my brothers did the orchestration, and I sang it with orchestra for the first time. It was a huge success, but it was terrifying at first: the audience had been waiting hours for Michael Jackson, and along I come to sing a song that nobody knows! That was pretty stressful, but when people started waving their hands in the air I thought ‘I won!’. It’s on YouTube, do watch it!

Later on I sang 'Sognare' on tour with a big band called Little Italy, and just before this album I made a CD called Seigneur, which includes a piano-vocal-guitar version. The song’s been following me for many years in different situations and different orchestrations.

The album includes excerpts from Lohengrin, a role which you debuted fairly recently: is more Wagner likely to figure in your future?

I always thought Wagner wasn’t for me, although I started getting offers when I was quite young: I was asked to do the French version of Tannhäuser on many occasions, and I always refused. When the offer of Lohengrin came along I initially said no…but my wife insisted it could work beautifully in my voice, and eventually I said ‘OK, I’ll do it for you!’. Things didn’t work out with Bayreuth, but that’s all in the past…and when I got the opportunity to do Lohengrin in Berlin I had the most wonderful experience. At first I was a bit sad because it was during lockdown and we had to do the first performance without an audience – but it was broadcast on live TV, which was quite a lot of pressure for my Wagner debut! 

The team in Berlin were really happy, and I received a lot of compliments on my diction from German people. But you know, Lohengrin can sound slightly foreign, because he comes from another land - he’s a stranger from who-knows-where, so he can have whatever accent he wants! I got a laugh when I said that in Berlin, but people said ‘Actually yes, you’re right!’. I know I did a good job, and I’m very proud of that.

I’ve received more offers of Wagner since Lohengrin, but the problem now is that it’s a race against time – these roles take so long to study and master. It’s a pity I didn’t have the courage to start on Wagner when I was younger: I’ve always been very shy and self-doubting, and that was a mistake. But I can’t complain, because I’ve been so lucky in this career – and there are still plenty of offers I can take up. I’ve sung more repertoire than I ever expected, pretty much everything that’s possible for my voice: there isn’t time to do literally everything, and you have to accept that.

Your wife told me a couple of years ago that she was also encouraging you to explore Mozart - did she succeed?!

It’s true! I’ve been to hear some Mozart with Aleksandra and I’m very proud of her, but I’d rather appreciate that than sing Mozart myself - and maybe it’s too late anyway. Perhaps in another life…if I make it to Paradise I’ll have eternity to study Mozart there! 

Lensky is a role you’ve never sung on stage, and it’s lovely to hear a snapshot of him here… 

I love this aria and the Russian repertoire. I recorded the aria in French on my Caruso album, because he sang it in French and it works beautifully. Our neighbours in the South of France are Russian, and when we met up to celebrate New Year the husband, Sergei, asked if I could sing him something in Russian because he was missing his country. I sang Lensky’s aria, and he started to cry – so Sergei, this is on the album for you!

So much has changed in the opera industry since the late 80s - which developments have you welcomed, and which do you feel less positive about?

Tastes change: today’s critics and audiences often prefer less bright voices, maybe with less squillo. The way people sing piano in particular has changed, but that’s not so terrible. The most terrible thing concerns the relationship between singers, and in fact people in general – because of smartphones, it feels like everybody is alone now. Sometimes you’ll sing your first phrase in an orchestral rehearsal and see people checking their phones rather than listening to their colleagues. That’s quite disturbing for me, because I love listening to everybody else – nobody’s really there these days, and in the beginning it wasn’t like that. 

You have less conversation in rehearsal-breaks because people are absorbed in their screens again, and when the session finishes everybody just goes home. When I started out in opera it was like being part of a troupe: you’d all go out to eat together, spend time together between rehearsals with your colleagues and their children, and generally become like family for the duration of a production. That’s gone today, and I think it’s a shame. 

But in terms of using technology to share what we do, everything is positive. We’re living through a wonderful epoch now, because we have so many opportunities to listen to music. When I was young it was quite difficult to hear different voices, whereas nowadays you can go on YouTube and learn from hundreds of singers. That’s very important, because to me the best teachers are other singers.

HD broadcasts are very important, although it’s not easy because it’s basically another discipline. You need to know how to please the camera and sing for the people in the cinema, not just the ones in the opera-house – again, that’s a skill I learned in my cabaret days.  But look at how many new audiences we can reach by mastering it: it’s like when they made the first live radio broadcast, and a lot of people got involved with opera because of that. Today people can go to the cinema and see a top-quality performance in good sound with HD close-ups…it’s like being on stage with the singers. I love that. 

Browse Roberto Alagna's complete available discography.