It is the first time that Roberto Alagna, who has performed on the greatest operatic stages and in the main roles of the repertoire, will take part in a musical.
On the Folies Bergère stage, he will share the bill with singer Bruno Pelletier ("Notre-Dame-de-Paris") in the role of Eliot Ness, the American Treasury agent who heads the "Incorruptibles" waged a merciless war against Al Capone.
The singer Anggun will play the mistress of the gangster in this fictionalized adaptation.
On a libretto and music by Jean-Félix Lalanne, the story will notably stage an idyll between Eliot Ness and a sister of Al Capone.
Al Capone was one of the most feared underworld bosses during the Prohibition era of the 1920s, when all production or sale of alcohol was officially banned in the United States.
"Godfather" of the Outfit gang in Chicago, the one nicknamed "Scarface" ("the scarred one") caused terror to reign with his network of racketeering and his very violent methods, such as the "massacre of St. Valentin", during which he had seven members of a rival gang executed in 1929.
Despite all the police chased after him, the gangster will never be prosecuted for his violent crimes, but for tax evasion, which will earn him a sentence of 11 years in prison and a passage on the penitentiary island of Alcatraz, in San Francisco Bay.
Released on bail in 1939, Al Capone died in January 1947 of pneumonia.
With a budget of 5 million euros, the musical "Al Capone", is produced by Jean-Marc Dumontet.
© 2022 AFP