Roberto Alagna doesn't suck. In fact, in the operatic sense of the term, which won't make sense to you if you dislike opera or don't know anything about it, Roberto Alagna rocks.

Recently I reviewed The Ten Tenors: Larger Than Life here at blogcritics, and their fans were so incensed by my condemnation of the group and the music they do that I even went to the trouble to post a second article clarifying some things I said in the first. Not an apology so much as an explanation of what I look for when I listen to anyone who makes it a point to call themselves a tenor on the cd's cover.

I mentioned Alagna in passing in the second article. I did not, at the time, own any of his recordings, but every time I've heard him I've been impressed. I had an impression of him that was in part, fallacious, though. He is no Pavarotti imitation, by any stretch of the imagination. If he sounded a bit like the master early in his career, well, most tenors could be forgiven for modeling themselves after one of the finest examples of Italianate, bel canto technique to ever sing on the operatic stage. Pav sings correctly, no ifs ands or buts. That's why his vibrato stayed steady late in his career, why he kept most of his high notes, why he could still thrill audiences to their feet in recitals.

A frenchman of Sicilian parentage, Alagna is the rare tenor who can bring gracile french sensibility to bear in Italian rep and Italian gusto into french repertoire. He is both an inheritor of Pavarotti's, and before him Jussi Björling's, legacy - a high-flying tenor with a gloriously ringing top who manages to make most everything he does sound rather effortless - and his own man. While Alagna does not necessarily possess the 'wow' factor of a Luciano or the sheer golden beauty of a Björling, he nonetheless has a generous, beautifully made voice that has a deeply satisfying golden sheen in the upper register. His taste is what most sets him apart from his predecessors. He sings, no matter the repertoire, with an unmatched gallic elegance and beauty. In this he is like a less-gifted predecessor who was famous not so much for the great beauty in his voice as his style, the late lyric tenor, Alfredo Kraus. Like Kraus, too, Alagna cuts a handsome figure on stage, which is another factor that separates him from the old legacy of beefy guys opera naïfs are aware of.

In his cd,Nessun Dorma, a collection of several rare and a few well-known arias from operas from the virile verismo era of Italian opera, Alagna takes some tenor chestnuts, like the aria "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's Turandot, as well as the hefty arias from Giordano's Andrea Chenier, and gives them what some operaphiles would consider rather lyrical treatments. Listeners accustomed to the machismo of a Mario Del Monaco or Franco Corelli attacking arias from Leoncavallo, Mascagni, lesser-known Giordano operas might not enjoy Alagna's distinctly tenorial approach, (as opposed to the baritonal thrust of a Del Monaco or Corelli), but I felt like I was hearing some of these arias for the first time.