Seldom the very British gift for understatement has been employed more brilliantly -- but by the end of the interview, the Daily Telegraph's Sir Rupert Christiansen had fallen in the trap so many of us have: Roberto Alagna, just like the character he played most memorably, Nemorino, has the gift to disarm you.
He also mentions something that makes one think -- no, not that he and Angela are fighting (didn't they always?). He says that the Alorghiu couple -- on the stage -- has come to an end:
One can discount this to the famous Alagnian gift for drama; or maybe, just maybe, those who argued, all these years, that the couple was pretty much toast already as a couple but they were remaining together as a duo for career/business reasons, maybe those cynics had a point (as cynics often do, unfortunately).
After all, at this point the Alagnas have recorded everything they could together, they've appeared together a lot, and anyway she's singing more often now with a younger, hotter, vocally healthier costar than her husband -- Jonas Kaufmann with whom Angela is creating a rather impressive couple in the MILF/toyboy tradition.
If this is indeed the case, Opera Chic will have to settle and join TEAM ALAGNA. Not simply because he once was the much better artist of the duo, the one with the real talent and potential of the two, but, again, because it's quite impossible to truly dislike someone who, Nemorino-like, can disarm you with this stuff:
And it's actually true, outside of ghost-worshipping loggionisti and other small communities belonging to fringe subcultures, few operagoers can anyway.
