Aria (Andrea Chénier)

Luigi Illica built the libretto around André Chénier, the poet guillotined in Paris in July 1794, two days before the fall of Robespierre. Giordano, in his twenties and under contract to the publisher Sonzogno, worked in poor conditions and came close to abandoning the score; Mascagni's intervention with the publisher helped keep it alive. The premiere at La Scala on 28 March 1896 succeeded from the first act. The opera moves between salon, tribunal and prison, and gives the baritone, in Gérard, a political conscience and a change of mind unusual in Italian opera of the period.