Tenor leaves the stage at La Scala

[jllaney]

Roberto Alagna is heckled by the crowd and then leaves the stage forcing the understudy to step in wearing jeans. Must have been a rather odd scene.

After reading that people pay $2000 for tickets to La Scala, I'll never complain about New York prices again.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/1...reut/index.html

[richard53dog]

Roberto Alagna is heckled by the crowd and then leaves the stage forcing the understudy to step in wearing jeans. Must have been a rather odd scene.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/1...reut/index.html[/url]

You have to wonder what he was thinking singing Radames anyway.

The reports indicate that the causes was the booing and/or the review . Who knows if there were also administrative issues that he was angry about.

Too bad, I like Alagna as a performer, but again I shake my head at him singing Radames.

[zerbinetta]

The average top ticket for the opera at La Scala is 170 Euros = $240. That higher price quoted is perhaps for opening night of the season. Otherwise ticket prices are quite in line with the Met & other European houses.

Alagna is a light lyric tenor & wonderful in roles suitable to his voice - Faust, Romeo, etc. As Richard53dog points out, Alagna would be wiser to stay away from Verdi and Puccini roles which require greater heft than he owns. It will also, eventually, wreck his lovely instrument, a la Richard Leech.

There was mention in this article of an interview or interviews in which Alagna apparently criticized the Milan audience. Not a wise move. Milan is notorious for its opera claques.

The Pavarotti situation was ludicrous. He was booed on opening night of his first ever Don Carlo because he cracked a high note? Puleeze. I saw the second performance and he was wonderful.

If the Milan audience booed an icon like their own Luciano, it isn't surprising that they would boo a French tenor, albeit with Italian roots.

That said, there is never a reasonable excuse to leave one's colleagues in the lurch as Alagna did. Divo tantrums shorten careers more than poor singing ever will.

[zerbinetta]

Forbes.com has just reported that Teatro alla Scala has announced that Roberto Alagna will not sing the remaining performances of Aida. The theater claims he had broken his contract by leaving the stage during the performance.

[carbro]

Thanks, zerbinetta.

Forbes.com carried AP's report, which you can find here.

[Haglund's]

Maybe Alagna was also feeling down, because he didn't look as good as Roberto Bolle in his thong and head plume. Go to the La Scala web site for the hot stuff. Scroll down to Act 2, Scene 2.

[Paul Parish]

Well, you guys scare me; my sympathies are with Alagna. If the director casts him as Radames, if HE believes in him, that counts for a lot. But it doesn't mean he went into the project with complete confidence. I remember an interview with Sena Jurinac in which she said if Karajan (or maybe it was Klemperer, can't remember, it was one of the conductors of massive authority) thought she could could do it, well, that gave her a lot more confidence.

Thing is, it's the performers who're most likely to lose it -- to go mad onstage, even, like Spessiva -- who very often when able to concentrate can reach the most amazing visionary places. If Alagna was encouraged, and actually engaged, to go into a production he must have had doubts about, he's the person i'm concerned for. Me, I'm rarely on the side of the heckler.

[jllaney]

Thank you Haglund for that wonderful link to those pictures. It's just amazing to see the scale of that production and how many people must have been involved to bring it to stage.

[carbro]

NPR's Robert Siegel interviews Corriere della Sera's music critic, Enrico Girardi. The segment ends with a snippet of Placido Domingo singing Celeste Aida, "no booing, no walking out."

[zerbinetta]

I doubt anyone here is on the side of the hecklers, Paul Parish. They were a minority of the Scala audience & disrupted the performance for all the rest of the paying audience. That's Scala.

However, that was not my point. Alagna left Komlosi onstage, alone, to sing a duet. It would be comparable to a partner leaving his ballerina alone to finish a pas de deux.

Placido Domingo (as conductor) was booed last week during a performance of La Boheme at the Met. He was clearly shocked and shaken. It may have been the first time he has been booed, certainly the first at the Met. He did not go into a hissy fit and leave his cast to fend for themselves. Consummate professional that he is, he continued - and finished - the performance.

Short of a heart attack or broken leg, any professional performer is required to put aside personal difficulties and go on with the show, for his colleagues' sake if not for the audience's.

[sandik]

Maybe Alagna was also feeling down, because he didn't look as good as Roberto Bolle in his thong and head plume. Go to the La Scala web site for the hot stuff. Scroll down to Act 2, Scene 2.

Golly.

The chest plate was pretty impressive too -- was that supposed to be leopard skin?

I've read about this production before, but these were the first photos I've seen. I can understand why everyone was talking about the second cast singer who came on in shirt and jeans...

[Helene]

Maybe Alagna was also feeling down, because he didn't look as good as Roberto Bolle in his thong and head plume. Go to the La Scala web site for the hot stuff. Scroll down to Act 2, Scene 2.

Yowza. No wonder he'd be down!

I remember Myrna Kamara (his partner in the photo) when she danced with NYCB. I didn't realize she was still performing.

[dirac]

Well, you guys scare me; my sympathies are with Alagna. If the director casts him as Radames, if HE believes in him, that counts for a lot. But it doesn't mean he went into the project with complete confidence. I remember an interview with Sena Jurinac in which she said if Karajan (or maybe it was Klemperer, can't remember, it was one of the conductors of massive authority) thought she could could do it, well, that gave her a lot more confidence.

Thing is, it's the performers who're most likely to lose it -- to go mad onstage, even, like Spessiva -- who very often when able to concentrate can reach the most amazing visionary places. If Alagna was encouraged, and actually engaged, to go into a production he must have had doubts about, he's the person i'm concerned for. Me, I'm rarely on the side of the heckler.

Yes, heckling is always with us, but that doesn't necessarily make it a justified reaction in some cases. A performer should never leave the stage mid performance because of a hostile audience, but I’m holding off before passing judgment on Alagna – I don’t know enough about the background of the matter and the news accounts, the ones I’ve seen at any rate, are skimpy. Callas took a beating in 1958 in Rome when she walked out after the first act of “Norma” and it wasn’t necessarily justified. I don’t suggest it’s an exact analogy, far from it, but sometimes these things look different in retrospect.

richard53dog writes:

You have to wonder what he was thinking singing Radames anyway.

I agree. In a way they did him a favor by firing him.

[Anthony_NYC]

I had been feeling sympathetic to Alagna--we all have our bad days when we do regrettable things--but now he's just getting silly.

"What if they had thrown stones at me, or some crazy person had attacked me?", he told Reuters. "La Scala should have protected me. The show should have been suspended. Instead they carried on as if nothing had happened. After all, John Lennon ended up being killed."

[Haglund's]

I just read in today's International Herald Tribune that this whole incident was caught on tape! Apparently, Decca Classics was making a DVD of the production. Classic, indeed! This has 'Morley Safer interview' written all over it, doesn't it?

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/13/features/tenor.php

[richard53dog]

I just read in today's International Herald Tribune that this whole incident was caught on tape! Apparently, Decca Classics was making a DVD of the production. Classic, indeed! This has 'Morley Safer interview' written all over it, doesn't it?

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/13/features/tenor.php

Yeah, Decca, La Scala, and Alagna are all threatening lawsuits. It will be interesting to see if Alagna enters the theater for the next performance (I think Thursday).

Can Decca issue the DVD? Maybe if they have enough rehearsal footage to provide alternate material to what was taped at the prima. Think of the publicity it already has!!!!!

It seems like Bolle came out of this mess the best, publicity wise, at least from what I've read

[volcanohunter]

France 2 showed footage of the incident on its evening news. You can view it, for the next 24 hours or so, by clicking onto the following link:

http://jt.france2.fr/20h

It will also be available for the next week under "Les éditions précédentes."

Use the menu on the right to skip ahead to the segment at 32 minutes past the hour. (Scala de Milan : les suites de l'affaire Roberto Alagna...)

On a happier note, it's followed immediately by a report on the POB's Giselle, with Aurelie Dupont and Nicolas Le Riche.

[volcanohunter]

More Alagna footage on France 2 today. This time he's singing outside La Scala since they won't let him in. Skip ahead to the last segment of the broadcast ("Roberto Alagna répond à la Scala de Milan").

http://jt.france2.fr/20h

Actually, there's more entertainment value in the preceding segment on Candide.

[Helene]

Can Decca issue the DVD? Maybe if they have enough rehearsal footage to provide alternate material to what was taped at the prima. Think of the publicity it already has!!!!!

Imagine how much publicity there will be when The Incident is offered as a "Special Feature."

[richard53dog]

More Alagna footage on France 2 today. This time he's singing outside La Scala since they won't let him in.

This seems to be evolving into one of those situation defined by the saw "there is no such thing as BAD publicity" (at least for Alagna)

[dirac]

I had been feeling sympathetic to Alagna--we all have our bad days when we do regrettable things--but now he's just getting silly.

"What if they had thrown stones at me, or some crazy person had attacked me?", he told Reuters. "La Scala should have protected me. The show should have been suspended. Instead they carried on as if nothing had happened. After all, John Lennon ended up being killed."

That's a bit much. Alagna is saying low blood sugar was the problem, according to this AP report.

"I was fine when I started, but this problem with my metabolism, if I am very emotional or stressed, my system consumes sugars very quickly," Alagna said by telephone from the airport in Milan on Friday. "After that happened to me, the sugars went down dramatically. I couldn't stay on my feet, I had to sit. I didn't have the strength."

[bart]

http://jt.france2.fr/20h

Actually, there's more entertainment value in the preceding segment on Candide.

You're right, volcanohunter. Thanks for calling it to our attention. Imagine Candide on a voyage to the US (a kind of tv-land) instead of Spain and Argentina, complete with fanatical religious zealots and Marilyn Monroe singing "Glitter and Be Gay." Not to mention the number with Bush, Chirac, Blair, and others singing in their underwear. Great stuff! Alagna's story is last week's refried beans next to all that.

[volcanohunter]

Not to mention the number with Bush, Chirac, Blair, and others singing in their underwear. Great stuff! Alagna's story is last week's refried beans next to all that.

Apparently La Scala was less than impressed by that scene:

La Scala may reslate 'Candide' without drunken world leaders dance

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070103/ennew...ra_070103120033

[jllaney]

Alagna returns. But not to La Scala

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071017/ap_en_...E0xIEO.JEtxFb8C

[dirac]

Thanks for the link and the update, jllaney. I liked this quote:

"We are not 'Bonnie and Clyde!'

‘Actually, we see ourselves more as Bugsy and Virginia,’ Alagna did not clarify. 'They were prettier.'