During the French Revolution, a secret police chief arrests a politically radical artist in order to extort sex from his glamorous girlfriend. Puccini’s Tosca? Nope, Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier.
Puccini’s team of librettists for Tosca included Luigi Illica, who had written Giordano’s text five years earlier. They borrowed (to put it charitably) the basic plot line plot and honed its verismo spirit, while tightening up the text, plot and characterization. Giordano’ssweeping, sentimental and often overstuffed tapestry of individuals buffeted by the revolutionary masses became a claustrophobic study of irreconcilable conflict among three vivid personalities whose actions are entirely their own.
Giordano’s naïve young aristocrat Madeleine became Tosca, a proud and jealous diva who commits murder. Chénier himself, who seems never to fully commit to revolution, becomes Cavaradossi, who gives his life for the cause. And Carlo Gérard, Giordano’s police chief whose moral qualms trump his lust, becomes Scarpia, Puccini’s implacable and ruthless sadist. Small wonder, then, that this year almost one hundred opera houses across the globe are set to perform Tosca, while barely a half-dozen offer Chénier.
Yet Giordano’sopera clings to its modest spot in the operatic canon—especially for serious opera buffs—because it contains superb arias for tenor, soprano, and baritone, plus several emotional duets, that have been vehicles for great singers for more than a century.
Over the years, OperaDelaware has earned a national reputation for championing unjustly neglected operatic classics of this kind. The company’s formula puts music first. It casts emerging young singers, coaches them well, and supplies vigorous and idiomatic orchestral accompaniment.
For the three leading roles in Chénier, this production showcased singers in transition between lighter and more lyrical roles and the type of full-voiced Italianate style verismo opera demands. Soprano Toni Marie Palmertree recently jumped in as Madama Butterfly at the Met, tenor Dane Suarez is working his way up on the US regional opera circuit, and baritone Gerard Moon is following a few steps behind him.
OperaDelaware also goes out of its way to employ local artists for smaller roles: a pre-opera talk stated that all but a few of them in this production came from within a 30-mile radius of Wilmington. Particular standouts were two baritones: Marcus Deloach, whose extraordinarily clear diction supported finely etched double portrayals of Fléville and Fouquier, and Brian James Myer’s characterful cameo of the revolutionary Mattieu. Max Zande as the spy L’Incredibile added the most haunting whistling I’ve heard on the operatic stage.
Surely few, if any, of these singers had performed the opera before, and their confident vocalism and intelligible diction are also evidence of high-quality professional coaching. Vocal aficionados and fans of operatic superstars might legitimately object that the three lead roles—a fearful demoiselle, a lyrical poet prone to springtime musings, and a villain with a soft streak—deserved greater contrasts in volume and vocal color. As with much modern singing, loud volume and pressed vocal style ran roughshod over this opera’s gentler and more delicate moments.
True enough, yet the performance nonetheless delivered the blood-and-guts Italian singing essential to the late turn-of-the-twentieth-century verismo style when it had to—not least in the triumphal final duet. (My companion, who attended the recent superstar-laden Met production of Chénier last year, insisted that he enjoyed this more.) Much of the praise goes also to Music Director Anthony Barrese, who knows how this type of opera goes, coaxed a solid performance out of a deftly reduced orchestra. The sets did the job, though one wonders why a unit set required three intermissions.
One reason why OperaDelaware performances have such a thrilling musical impact is that it performs in Wilmington’s Grand Theater, which possesses the most resonant, immediate and intimate acoustics of any US opera space I know. Hearing opera there recreates the immediacy and power of what buffs must have routinely experienced 154 years ago, when the theater was built.
The Wilmington audience responded with an enthusiastic standing ovation. A focused, exciting performance at this scale is something every opera lover in this country should consider traveling to experience at least once. In that respect, it is important to remember that the Grand Theater is within walking distance from both I-95 and the Wilmington Amtrak station.
One final note: OperaDelaware has reached these heights under 14 years of inspired leadership by General Director Brendan Cooke. This performance marks his last. His successor as of next year is to be Eric Einhorn, who until recently managed one of New York’s most innovative and satisfying companies, On-Site Opera. This bodes well for the continuation of this regional company’s indispensable role in American opera.
Andrew Moravcsik
Andrea Chénier
Opera in four acts composed by Umberto Giordano
Libretto by Luigi Illica
Cast and production staff:
Dane Suarez (Andrea Chénier); Toni-Marie Palmertree (Maddalena di Coigny); Gerard Moon (Carlo Gérard); Taylor-Alexis Dupont (Bersi); Max Zander (L’Incredibile); Brian James Myer (Mathieu); Dylan Gregg (Roucher); Daryl Freedman (Madelon); Lauren Cook (Countess di Coigny); Marcus DeLoach (Fléville / Fouquier-Tinville); Douglas Rowland (L’Abate); Dominic Walker (Il maestro di casa / Dumas); Dante Doganiero (Schmidt).
Anthony Barrese (Conductor). Octavio Cardenas (Stage Director).
The Grand Wilmington, 13 May 2026
Top image: The French Revolutionary Masses
All photos by Joe Del Tufo of Moonloop Photography