Andrea Chenier
Royal Opera House
★★★★
The farewell to life written in 1794 by the French poet Andre Chenier is the most hauntingly dreadful poem ever penned. It was written on the day of his death in the Saint-Lazare prison, a holding-pen where he and other condemned creatures waited for their names to be called, before being packed into the tumbril and sent to the guillotine. And it’s written less in fear, than in a cold fury at the enemies who are about to cut his head off.
‘Like a last ray of sunshine, like a last gentle breeze, as they gladden the end of a beautiful day,’ his poem begins (in my translation), ‘at the foot of the scaffold I once more play on my lyre. Perhaps it’s already my turn to go…’ And these are the words – of infinitely dignified regret – which Umberto Giordano took as the text for the hero’s climactic aria in his dramma istorico which premiered at La Scala in 1896.
It’s a fine aria, but not instantly memorable, and the same might be said of the work itself: Andrea Chénier has grace, power, and integrity, but audiences have never taken it to their hearts the way Giordano must have hoped.
Sondra Radvanovsky (Maddalena) and Jonas Kaufmann (Andrea Chénier) ©ROH/Marc Brenner
David McVicar’s ROH production is now in its second revival but still with Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, and you couldn’t wish for a more scrupulously historical treatment of this perennially relevant story. Relevant, because the prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville has his direct descendants in Ebrahim Raisi and his friends in Tehran today, with their wholesale slaughter of those who raise their voices against them. McVicar and his designer Robert Jones have magisterially conjured up the clash of worlds, as sansculottes invade the palace, and truth is trampled underfoot in the brusque proceedings of the people’s court.
With Antonio Pappano in the pit, the production moves at a cracking pace, powered by some superb singing. The undoubted star of the evening is the rousing Mongolian bass Amartuvshin Enkhbat in the role of the morally-tormented Gerard, with soprano Sondra Radvanovsky deeply moving as the faithful-to-the-end Maddalena; despite the persuasion of a noisy claque, Kaufmann’s sound – though perfectly decent – didn’t transfix us as it used to. But with Ashley Riches as a graceful Roucher, James Cleverton as the busily revolutionary Mathieu, and Rosalind Plowright as the beleaguered Contessa, the supporting principals were all in top-notch form, as was the chorus. This production represents a brilliantly vivid ensemble achievement.
Michael Church 30.5.2024