Historical drama in four scenes by Umberto Giordano, libretto by Luigi Illica
Staged by the Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Bologna and the Opéra Garnier Monte-Carlo
Characters and interpreters:
Andrea Chénier
Fabio Sartori
Carlo Gérard
Amartuvshin Enkhbat
Stefano Meo (9,12)
Maddalena di Coigny
Maria Josè Siri
Valentina Boi (9, 12)
The mulatta Bersi
Cristina Melis
The Countess of Coigny
Siranush Khachatryan
Madelon
Manuela Custer
Roucher
Nicolò Ceriani
Fléville
Matteo Peirone
Fouquier Tinville
Marco Camastra
Mathieu
Luciano Roberti
An incredible
Didier Pieri
The abbot
Gianluca Sorrentino
The master of the house
Franco Rios Castro
Dumas
Angelo Parisi
Schmidt
Andrea Porta
Concertmaster and conductor
Donato Renzetti
Director
Pier Francesco Maestrini
Scenes and videos
Nicolás Boni
Costumes
Stefania Scaraggi
Choreography
Silvia Giordano
Lights
Daniele Naldi
Orchestra, Chorus and Technicians of the Opera Carlo Felice Genova
Choirmaster Claudio Marino Moretti
Ballet Fondazione Formazione Danza e Spettacolo ‘For Dance’ ETS
Stage Director
Luciano Novelli
Stage musical director
Simone Ori
Hall Masters
Sirio Restani, Antonella Poli
Stage Masters
Andrea Gastaldo, Anna Maria Pascarella
other Choir Master
Patrizia Priarone
Lighting Master
Luca Salin
Master of supertitles
Simone Giusto
Music archive manager
Simone Brizio
Stage director
Alessandro Pastorino
Console Handling Manager
Andrea Musenich
Engineer foreman
Gianni Cois
Foreman electricians/lighting booth
Marco Gerli
Tooling foreman
Tiziano Baradel
Head of audio/video department
Walter Ivaldi
Head of tailoring, shoemaking, make-up and wigs
Elena Pirino
Make-up and hair co-ordinator
Raul Ivaldi
Assistant director
Silvia Giordano
Assistant light designer
Paolo Bonapace
Sets, props and costumes
Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Opéra Garnier Monte-Carlo
Equipment
E. Rancati
Costumes
Sartoria Cimec di Mario Brancati
Footwear
Epoca
Wigs
Audello Teatro
Supertitles by
Fondazione Teatro Carlo Felice
Opera in brief
by Ludovica Gelpi
When he began work on Andrea Chénier in 1895, Umberto Giordano was twenty-eight years old and had three opera titles under his belt: the first – Marina, from 1889 – had never been performed, Mala vita, from 1892, had been lukewarmly received, and Regina Diaz, from 1894, had been a flop. Giordano had recently moved to Milan, where he came into contact with the verista milieu and in particular with the composer Alberto Franchetti. The latter had received from librettist Luigi Illica a libretto inspired by the life of the poet Andrea Chénier, and it was to Giordano that he decided to entrust it for an opera. When the work was completed, despite the uncertainties of first the publisher Sonzogno and then the Teatro alla Scala, the first performance of Andrea Chénier on March 28, 1896 was a triumph. Soon the opera was revived in Italy and Europe and to this day remains along with Fedora (1898) the composer’s greatest success.
The subject is precisely inspired by the life of French poet Andrea Chénier (1762-1794), who was condemned for his pro-monarchist and constitutionalist ideals by the revolutionary court and executed at the height of the Reign of Terror. The first painting is set in the palace of the Counts of Coigny in 1789, at the dawn of the Revolution. Each of the three main characters, Chénier, the Countess Maddalena, and the servant Gérard, represents a different point of view on the sharp contrast between the aristocracy of the Ancien Régime and the increasingly palpable tension of the people. Maddalena is a young daughter of the nobility, showing herself to be sensitive but never really confronted with alternative contexts to her own; Chénier is an established artist embedded in high society, whose superficiality he denounces, however; Gérard experiences firsthand the bitterness of the people, at the end of the first painting he begins his “own revolution” by railing against his masters and dismissing himself. From the second painting the setting shifts to 1794 Paris, where the Revolution overthrew the nobility and resulted in Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. From here and until the end of the fourth painting, each of the characters is overwhelmed by historical contingencies. Magdalene, as a former noble, is forced to live in misery and hiding. Andrew is identified as a counterrevolutionary, then tried and executed. Gérard has become Robespierre’s lieutenant, but soon realizes that he has abandoned his status as servant of the nobility only to become a servant again, and this time of a bloody regime now far removed from the ideals it had promised.
Political and social tension goes hand in hand with love tension, told in its purest and most passionate expression with the story between Andrew and Magdalene and in its most morbid and violent with Gérard’s obsession with Magdalene. Love is in this work inextricably linked to historical shifts and evolves with them. Magdalene and Andrew experience the feeling as the true and only way to salvation, so strong in their union that they advance together to the scaffold in ecstasy. Gérard goes so far as to want to kidnap and then rape Magdalene, and only once he is confronted with the true face of an oppressive and corrupt system will he feel repentance.
Andrea Chénier is considered one of the masterpieces of the verismo repertoire, yet the realism and accuracy of the historical transposition are combined with a heroic dimension animated by the deep ideals and sentiments that could have inhabited a serious opera of Händelian composure. This dramaturgical aspect in itself has an important repercussion on the musical level and reveals the singularity of the encounter between Illica and Giordano. On the one hand, a librettist able to grasp and rework the dramatic potential of the story of Chénier, almost a hero par excellence. On the other, a composer ready to adapt his language to the best possible expression of the subject, attuned as much to the misery of everyday life as to the momentum of the burning spirit. Giordano employed direct and effective writing, at times almost declamatory and in this typically veristic, fully expressed his melodic talent and passionate vein. To all this he added the contrast of more tragic hues, which emerges both in the lyricism of such famous pieces as “Un dì all’azzurro spazio” and “La mamma morta,” and in the choral moments, which convey in its many facets the impetus of a distraught collectivity.
