Andrea Chénier

Andrea Chénier had its first performance at La Scala on 28 March 1896 and made Giordano's career at a stroke; he had been living on almost nothing after the failure of his previous opera and had been given the libretto by Luigi Illica only after Alberto Franchetti relinquished it. Illica built the plot around the poet André Chénier, guillotined in 1794, setting the private drama against the Revolution and using period songs and the Carmagnole inside the score. The tenor's Improvviso in Act One is delivered as an improvised poem, which is unusual: an aria whose text is presented as being invented on stage.