Two decades after its very first spark, the love story between Bruno Pelletier and the French public continues. The Quebecer is rekindling the flame today with a role in the musical al Caponepresented in Paris until May.
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No, our French cousins have not forgotten Bruno Pelletier, even two decades after he donned the clothes of Gringoire in Notre Dame de Paris. On the contrary. They acclaim these days his great return on the boards of the mythical theater of the Folies Bergère, in the 9th arrondissement.
“I didn’t know what to expect. In fact, I thought they would have forgotten about me after all these years. But it’s a very loyal audience, ”says the Quebecer on the line from the City of Light.
The newspaper spoke with Bruno Pelletier earlier this week, shortly before he took the stage for the fifth performance of the musical al Capone.
In this original creation by Jean-Félix Lalanne, the story of the most famous American gangster is revisited with, in the title role, the Franco-Italian tenor Robert Alagna. Bruno Pelletier lends his features to Eliot Ness, the cop who spent his career tracking down Al Capone in Chicago in the 1930s.
fact and fiction
But while its premise revolves around very real and documented facts, the musical takes many liberties in the name of entertainment. Fiction notably takes its ease when Bruno Pelletier’s character falls in love with Rita Capone, the sister of the mobster he obsessively pursues.
“This is not the story of Al Capone, specifies Bruno Pelletier. He had sisters, but the one in the show is completely fictional, like his romance with Eliot Ness. »
This Eliot Ness is also very different from the one we discover in the great history books. “More dark, nasty and taciturn” on the boards, the character turns out to be the antithesis of Gringoire, famous narrator of Notre Dame de Paris which revealed Bruno Pelletier to many French people at the end of the 1990s.
And that’s exactly why the role was so attractive to the Quebecer.
“Of course I can’t make you forget Notre Dame de Paris to the French public, confirms Bruno Pelletier. But if I came back here [en France] after twenty years, it had to be in a completely different role, a role that has nothing to do with what they knew of me. »
al Capone will be presented to the French media on Thursday evening.