In today's Sunday Telegraph, Angela Gheorghiu leaves a long interview with Julia Llewellyn Smith. She talks about her battles with opera producers and artistic directors. She also talks about Roberto Alagna:
Gheorghiu's marriage to tenor Roberto Alagna was a meeting of soul mates, but then divorce loomed and the Royal Opera House had to keep their schedules separate. Now, however, it's all hearts and flowers again.
“We are in a very happy place right now,” says the prima donna, a broad smile on her full lips, when, after one cancellation and an hour's delay, the following day we finally meet in her dressing room at Covent Garden's Royal Opera House. “We really decided it was stupid to be apart.”
So stupid, in fact, that, having announced they would never sing together again, next year the couple will make their first post-split appearance, in La Bohème at Covent Garden – the very opera that brought them together exactly 20 years before.
“Yes, it will be very emotional for everybody and very exciting,” Gheorghiu says, batting her thick eyelashes. But she'd said she had had enough of duetting with the French-Sicilian. “Yes, I needed a break from him. I never married Roberto because he's an opera singer and I wanted to sing only with him. Now, we understand that the most important thing is our private life. We keep apart our two lives – there's one on stage with colleagues and our own projects, and then the other, which is home.”
via Telegraph
Photo: Romania Libera
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
How about something new about Vittorio Grigolo. He is singing in the big houses, has a project about Italy in preparation, and I have heard he will sing a concert with Jonas Kaufmann during the European Soccer Championships. Would love to know more. Thanks and keep up the good work.