PortraitAfter “Robin Hood”, Michel Sardou and “Bernadette de Lourdes”, the hyperactive producer wants to put D-Day to music. Its big immersive show scheduled for 2024 is already raising critics who fear that glitz and history don’t go well together.
The tables had to be rearranged to make room. In the middle of the large dining room of the Majorelle, the restaurant of the modern Grand Hotel, in Lourdes, Roberto Ciurleo, 53, tanned, comfortable in his jacket uniform, T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, plays the master of ceremony. In a few hours, this April 11, Bernadette of Lourdes, the show he produces around the life of Bernadette Soubirous, will give its first performance since its revival.
In the city, it is an event. For Roberto Ciurleo and his co-producers, a great comeback after a year and a half hiatus linked to Covid-19 which almost cut the wings of this show launched in the summer of 2019 which revisits the life of the young saint in costumes and songs. of the XIXe century. To celebrate the event, the fifties invited all his relatives. There is a producer there who is developing a series inspired by the life of Bernadette for Mediawan (whose founders Xavier Niel and Matthieu Pigasse are shareholders in the World), his associates from the Dalida Institute (a singing school which will open in September in Aix-en-Provence), television men, financiers…
There are also a few people aware of his great challenge at the moment, Tribute to heroes, a show around the Landing which should see the light of day in June 2024 in Carentan-les-Marais, in the Manche, for the eightieth anniversary of D-Day. Once all these little people are settled, hungry stomachs have to wait a few more minutes: Father Domenico gets up and blesses the meal with a few words in Italian. At the end of a table, Roberto Ciurleo crosses himself.
The enormous place of faith in his life
Faith, glitter, big money and dozens of professional friendships: welcome to the galaxy of Roberto Ciurleo. Producer of musicals (hits like Robin Hood in 2013 and flops like The three Musketeers in 2016 or saturday night fever in 2017), former all-powerful boss of NRJ and Virgin Radio, boss of a music label, the man is an ace of reinvention. Several times buried, as many times resurrected, he multiplies the projects today.
Recently, he therefore relaunched Bernadette of Lourdes, but also inaugurated his latest musical, I will love you, where the gray heads rushed to hear the hits of Michel Sardou again. He also produced a song that plays in a loop on music radios: Out in Style, from the French DJ Celestal and singer Cecilia Krull. Roberto Ciurleo likes to put technical innovation at the service of traditional tastes, even a bit outdated.
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