Metropolitan Opera Archives

Andrea Chénier received nine performances this season.
This production was borrowed from its co-owners, the San Francisco Opera and the Houston Grand Opera.

FUNDING:
Adaption gift of the Edith C. Blum Foundation

Review 1:

Review of Susan Elliott in the Post

Pomp and promise at the Met

"Andrea Chenier" had its season premiere Saturday night at the Metropolitan Opera with a new production and a promising cast that included Nicola Martinucci, Sherrill Milnes and Aprile Millo as the object of their rivalry and desire.

Some operagoers are still debating whether Millo is the real thing, or merely a collection of diva mannerisms. As Maddalena, her performance was generally committed - despite some unfortunate costuming decisions that overemphasized her generous bosom - and she sang with a vivid, consistent tone.

Milnes, now in his 25th season at the Met, was a delight. Gerard seems the perfect role for him - a born leader with a gruff, commanding exterior and a kind heart. He brought a clear, ringing tone and impassioned intensity to the third-act aria, deservedly bringing the house down. Milnes never broke character to receive adulation. But Martinucci, as Chenier, did on two occasions, flying in the face of opera etiquette. He possesses a superior instrument, but is a stiff (and here pompous) stage presence and rarely varies his tone.

Among the supporting cast, Diane Kesling was an energetic sweet-voiced La Bersi, and Andrea Velis a crafty, sinister Spy. Brian Shexnayder sang Roucher and Camellia Johnson filled the house easily in Madelon's aria. The score's luscious sonorities blossomed under Julius Rudel's baton and the orchestra, though far too loud in the first two acts, sounded glorious.

Fabrizzio Melano's production "borrowed" from San Francisco and Houston operas, benefits from the clean lines and spacious playing areas of Wolfram Skalicki's uncluttered set.

Review 2:

Bernard Holland in The New York Times
Met Borrows a Staging For “Andrea Chénier”

The Metropolitan Opera revived Umberto Giordano's "Andrea Chenier" on Saturday night, but not without the help of colleagues to the west. Unused since 1977 and more than 35 years old, the Met's own sets had, one house official said, "simply worn out." Saturday's production, designed by Wolfram Skalicki, belongs to the San Francisco Opera and the Houston Grand Opera jointly and was apparently trucked cross-country in a kind of international lend-lease.

Mr. Skalicki's sets do have a kind of travel-resistant durability. They appear basic enough to be practical, but mixing three-dimensional structure with painted scenery, they fall somewhere below typical Metropolitan Opera opulence and somewhere above road-show simplicity.

Mr. Skalicki likes diagonal lines, which in various scenes, use walls and fences to slice the Met stage into triangles. At the end, subterranean prison arches rise into the flies as Chénier and Maddalena walk arm in arm toward a giant guillotine bathed in blood-red light. It's a bit much, but then so is "Andrea Chenier."

The Met, in any case, treats Giordano's opera decently, ponderous melodrama that it is. There is always Giordano's unfailingly ingratiating music to push things along. The composer is also a generous and tactful politician to his singers. All the principals have their moments at center stage, and in precise proportion to their places in the piece.

For Chénier himself, there is "Un di, all'azzurro spazio" in the first act and "Come un bel di di maggio" in the fourth. Between them, Maddalena is given "Eravate possente" and "La mamma morte." To complete the symmetry is their final pre-execution duet, "Vicino a te."

Nicola Martinucci in the title role was a tenor of some refinement and intelligence, yet modest of voice. It is a moderately scaled sound, not immune to pressure at the top, and without that underlying cushion of resonance needed for a house the size of the Met.

Mr. Martinucci made his presence felt through clarity and pointed delivery. The wild and extended applause, especially from some upper reaches of the Met balconies, seemed a little out of scale with the force of his musical personality. This is New York City and 1990, but one would almost have thought there was a claque at work up there.

Aprile Millo was Maddalena, a role, whose low-slung tessitura seems to suit this dark-sounding soprano voice very well. For better and at times for worse, it was a quiet performance. One admired Ms. Millo's relaxed self-possession and abnegation of histrionics. But with Mr. Martinucci's inability to command this big stage, the two central figures of the opera sometimes receded from view.

Not so Sherrill Milnes as Gerard. Mr. Milnes's blunt, hard-working baritone may not be the last thing in suavity or accuracy, but it will never be upstaged. Camellia Johnson used her brief opportunity as Madelon with eloquent effect. Renato Capecchi and Andrea Velis are appropriately venomous characters as Mathieu and Incredible. Diane Kesling sang La Bersi's Act II aria with hard-edged energy. Joyce Castle, Brian Schexnayder, Bernard Fitch, Michael Sokol, Jeffrey Wells, James Courtney and Richard Vernon took the other roles.

Julius Rudel conducted with admirable enthusiasm, but the connections with his singers onstage were distressingly hit-or-miss. Fabrizio Melano oversaw the production with reasonable restraint. The costumes, most notable for Act I's soft pinks and purples, were by Jane Greenwood. Gil Wechsler designed the lighting.

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