After being accused provoking the departure of conductor Alain Lombard from the production of Faust at the Bastille, Roberto Alagna gave his version of what happened in an interview with Le Figaro.
I am very sad. I don’t understand the reaction of the press and the blogs which carry on without knowing the facts… precisely nothing happened!
I don’t disrespected Alain Lombard. He is a man with whom I have a friendship, and I respect his artistic opinions. He even said that after Franco Corelli he had never worked with such a kind singer.
We had one artistic disagreement about the Walpurgis scene where there’s a cut which he prefers, but I wanted to sing.
I was also late to a rehearsal once because of a road accident. The Maestro insisted on morning rehearsals, and as I live in the suburbs I had to travel for an hour and a half during the rush hour, so had to get up at 7am. A second delay was only seven minutes, which would have gone unnoticed if the rehearsal had begun with Siebel’s aria as scheduled. Lombard, believing that I was not going to arrive, sent everyone on a break. This is how a silly set of circumstances builds to create an absurd situation and fuel the gossip!
There appears to be a gap between Lombard’s conception of Faust and the implementation of his ideas. He is not angry with anyone but himself. During the orchestra rehearsals, he kept changing tempo, as if unable to find what he wanted. That is very disturbing for a singer, because everything is a matter of breathing. He said, “I can’t help it.” And when I pointed out to him that he wasn’t letting me breathe, he yelled, “I am not a soothsayer!” I was completely blocked. I’ve been singing Faust for twenty-eight years, I’m not a débutante, yet it put me in difficulty. I therefore decided to withdraw from the production; the theatre convinced me to change my mind.
I had nothing do do in choosing his replacement, Alain Altinoglu, but the return to normalcy has lifted a great weight from the whole team.
The production opens on September 22.
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.
Every time there is a conflict between conductor and singer the press chooses to side up with the conductors. However history has proved that conductors many times are more primadonnas than singers. And let’s not forget that the singer is the one that has to face the audience. Conductors keep forgetting that people don’t go to see operas like Traviata, Lohengrin, Faust, that have been performed hundred if thouzands of times all around the world just to see Sir So and So conducting. People want to see the new tenor or the new soprano, and that’s the way it is.
Thanks for the comment. In fact Alagna complained about the tempi, and the impossibility to breathe; so important and yet many conductors ignore that to maintain the pace they’ve decided on. Certainly conductors who love singers (and often sing along as they’re conducting) rarely have operatic showdowns.