Operatic passions

PUCCINI could hardly have written it more poignantly

PUCCINI could hardly have written it more poignantly. Roberto, the young tenor with a brilliant future, suddenly finds his perfect world collapsing around his ears as his young wife falls fatally ill and dies. The tragedy leaves him with a baby daughter, Ornella.

In a dramatic twist that might have been invented by a generous librettist, Angela sails into his life. Roberto has already sung opposite, the beautiful Romanian soprano in La Boheme at Covent Garden. What began as an artistic rapport soon blossoms into passion on an operatic scale. They travel, rehearse and perform together, and now they've finally found the time to get married this week in New York.

No wonder the real life romance of Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu has struck a scintillating chord among opera buffs. But nobody would be much interested if their artistry was not equally glamorous and the pair did not have the flair and panache to attract the most flamboyant accolades from the critics.

Alagna is regularly tipped as "the new Pavarotti" (so often that he turned up to a Decca Records reception to launch Gheorghiu's new CD of operatic arias wearing a rubber Pavarotti mask), and Gheorghiu grits her teeth every time somebody compares her to Maria Callas.

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Great compliments, no doubt, but maybe not too helpful to singers still trying to define their own niche and establish an individual sound.

"You need to make a comparison, no?" demands Gheorghiu, when I mention Callas. She picks poutily at the leg of her black trouser suit, where troublesome balling has started to appear in the fabric. Molto doloroso! "This is only for you, because if you are honest, if you see me and hear me, we are very different. OK, thank you for the compliment, but we're only sopranos and we're very different. Everybody has something different and that's very good." She won't thank you for glib cliche's. Better to say that Gheorghiu is incomparable.

Sir Georg Solti certainly thought so when he conducted her as Violetta, consumptive heroine of La Traviata, at Covent Garden in 1994. Amazingly, it was the first time the octogenarian maestro had conducted La Traviata on stage, and his belated debut was lit up by Gheorghiu's sudden arrival as a new force on the opera circuit. The production was such a smash, BBC 2's network controller, Michael Jackson, dramatically cleared his schedules to make room for it. The BBC planned and executed its broadcast in nine stressed out days, and it pulled a million and a half viewers - not much compared with a Princess Diana interview, but a massive figure for opera on television.

Gheorghiu beams broadly at the memory. After my first rehearsal, Maestro Solti he start to cry like a child, you can't imagine it, it was such a story. Richard Eyre the director said to him this is nothing, we've been crying for two weeks'." Critical reaction echoed the popular acclaim. The Guardian's Andrew Clements declared her to be "already one of the great Violettas". In the London, Times, John Higgins wrote that "like the best Violettas, she rises to her peak in the middle act ... She is also a remarkable actress". In the Evening Standard, Geoffrey Wheatcroft conjured a vision of Gheorghiu as grand opera's answer to Sharon Stone. He wrote: "she is also believable as a woman so sexy that men would kill for her, or die for her". "Well I hope not, for your sake," she laughs. "This is a journalist's opinion. I haven't time to think about it.' I'm all the time preoccupied to do my best and be very professional, that's all."

There's further proof of her developing mastery on her new disc, Arias. Under the nimble baton of John Mauceri, she turns in glowing, subtly detailed performances of pieces by Verdi, Massenet, Catalani, Puccini, Bellini and more.

GHEORGHIU'S amazing overnight triumph was not uite as overnight as it appeared. She made her international debut at Covent Garden in 1992, singing Zerlina in Don Giovanni. She says she knew she wanted to be an opera singer virtually as soon as she could walk.

She was born Angela Burlacu, in Adjud, central Moldavia, where her father was a train driver, and acquired the surname Gheorghiu from her first husband. Angela and her younger sister, Elena, now also a professional singer, were both captivated by opera. Even under the despicable regime, Romanian television always made time for opera and music.

"I haven't seen it anywhere else in world, the way it's done in Romania," says Gheorghiu. "They always[have a one hour programme of classical music on TV. For example, now each Saturday we have one hour of opera on the first TV channel. When I was child, every Saturday I watched a programme about music that Leonard Bernstein did for children. It was very useful for me and my sister. I always remember that.

"I started to sing when I was five or six years old. It was always opera, because I first heard opera in my parents house. I started to imitate everybody, and for me, for my parents, for my teacher, my future profession was clear. Everybody supported me." She left home at 14 to study at the Academy of Music in Bucharest. She rapidly absorbed the intricacies of music theory and proved an adept linguist. She's fluent in French, German and Italian - though she tuts over her clumsiness in English.

Both her and Alagna's diaries are packed with engagements for the next three years, including many joint appearances in opera productions and concert performances. But do they ever argue? What if they have a row before they go on stage? "No, no, no!" protests Gheorghiu. "We never argue. We speak about music and characterisation for hours and hours. We help each other because we know each other very well. For us it's just perfect. Pardon my modesty!" It's too good to be true, but it makes a great story.