Luigi Alva, Elegant Tenor With a Lighthearted Touch, Dies at 98

New York Times

15-05-2025

Luigi Alva, the Peruvian tenor who was a pre-eminent interpreter of Mozart and Rossini roles that highlighted his light-lyric voice, elegant phrasing and subtle acting during a three-decade career on the world's opera stages, died on Thursday at his home in Barlassina, Italy, north of Milan. He was 98.
His death was confirmed by Ernesto Palacio, a Peruvian tenor, the intendant of the Rossini Opera Festival and a close friend.
Mr. Alva did not have the booming, resonant voice needed for dramatic tenor performances in the biggest opera houses. But he triumphed in opera buffa roles — such as Count Almaviva in Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' and the lovesick Ernesto in Donizetti's 'Don Pasquale' — which demanded fine comedic timing and an appreciation for absurd situations without resorting to slapstick or mugging.
In more serious roles, such as Don Ottavio in Mozart's 'Don Giovanni,' Mr. Alva displayed a warm timbre and gracious line that gained him an enthusiastic following. Few tenors could match his ability to deliver long coloratura passages with a single breath, as Mr. Alva did time and again in 'Il mio tesoro,' the famous aria from 'Don Giovanni.'
'The real trick is not merely to sing the passage, but to make it sound easy,' the critic Alan Rich of The New York Times wrote on the occasion of Mr. Alva's New York recital debut at Judson Hall in 1961. 'And this was the way he sang throughout the evening — beautifully, and with an assurance that was literally breathtaking.'
Luís Ernesto Alva y Talledo — known professionally as Luigi Alva — was born on April 10, 1927, in Paita, a Pacific Ocean port in northern Peru. His father, Augusto Alva, a railway company employee, and his mother, Virginia Talledo, moved to Lima, the capital, when Luís, their only child, was 6.
The boy studied at a Catholic elementary school and an English-language private high school, where he was popular with teachers and fellow students for his vocal renditions of Argentine tango music. He enrolled in Peru's Naval Academy intending to become a ship's captain, but after singing in a musical production while he was a student, he was approached by Rosa Mercedes Ayarza de Morales, the leading Peruvian classical voice teacher, who had been in the audience. She told him that his destiny was on the opera stage, not on the high seas.
Mr. Alva joined Peru's Conservatorio Nacional de Música as Ms. Ayarza's pupil. Following several performances in zarzuelas and operas onstage and on radio, and heeding the advice of Ms. Ayarza, he moved to Italy in 1953 for more voice lessons, in Milan, and to advance his career.
Success came quickly. In 1954, he made his European debut as Alfredo in Verdi's 'La Traviata' at Milan's Teatro Nuovo. A year later, he won plaudits for his performance as Paolino in Cimarosa's 'Il Matrimonio Segreto' at Milan's La Piccola Scala. And, in 1956, he made his first appearance on a big stage, at La Scala, as Count Almaviva in 'The Barber of Seville,' starring alongside the soprano Maria Callas.
Over the next eight years, Mr. Alva shuttled between La Piccola Scala and bigger houses in Europe and the United States. In the larger settings of La Scala or the Metropolitan Opera in New York, he embraced a limited repertoire of roles more suitable to his slender voice. But in the smaller Milan theater, he took on roles in 18 operas, including unexpected ones, including the title role in Handel's 'Xerxes' (with its famed aria 'Ombra mai fu') and Bacchus in Strauss's 'Ariadne auf Naxos.'
'Mr. Alva's career was enriched, and audiences had a chance to hear an intelligent and interesting artist in roles he could never have undertaken — or operas that could not have been mounted — in the parent house,' Will Crutchfield, a Times music critic, wrote in 1985.
On retiring from the opera stage in 1989, Mr. Alva, who took up permanent residence in the Milan area, dedicated himself to promoting young singers, especially in his native Peru. They included another Peruvian tenor, Juan Diego Flórez, who achieved even greater renown than his predecessor.
His survivors include his wife, Anita Zanetti, and their two sons, Juan and Pedro.
Among Mr. Alva's most popular roles were Almaviva, Don Ottavio and Ernesto. To those, he added Fenton, the earnest suitor of the love interest Nannetta, in Verdi's 'Falstaff,' which he performed in March 1964 for his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in a production staged by Franco Zeffirelli and conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
Mr. Alva had bittersweet memories of that performance. 'We were all very sad, because the closure of the 'old' Met was approaching,' he recalled in a 2017 interview with Opera Magazine, marking his 90th birthday. 'Its destruction was already decided when, it seems to me, it would have been possible to restore it.'
(The cast included Gabriella Tucci as Alice and Rosalind Elias as Meg; Ms. Tucci died in July 2020 and Ms. Elias two months earlier.)
Mr. Alva performed the role of Fenton a total of 33 times at the Met, most of them in the new house. 'His gentle voice is perfect for the innocent Fenton,' wrote David Salazar, editor in chief of OperaWire, in 2017. 'After hearing him and Anna Moffo together, you might find most other tenors too heavy for this most delicate of roles.'
Besides performing Almaviva frequently onstage, including 21 appearances at the Met in that role, Mr. Alva made four recordings of 'The Barber of Seville.' The most famous featured Ms. Callas as Countess Rosina and Tito Gobbi as Figaro.
'He was perfect for the Rossini,' the mezzo soprano Shirley Love, who was often paired with Mr. Alva, told OperaWire in 2018. 'He had a wonderful sense of humor that always came out in his singing.'