When David McVicar’s production of Andrea Chénier was new in 2015, Jonas Kaufmann was in the title role, sufficient justification perhaps for reviving Giordano’s verismo opera.
This time the French revolutionary poet was sung by Roberto Alagna, making his 100th Royal Opera appearance and still able to command a strong tone and legato line.
Paired with Sondra Radvanovsky as the poet’s lover, Maddalena, there’s no lack of passion. But Radvanovsky’s bursts of lyricism are modulated more expressively, evoking the character’s predicaments with feeling. No less tortured are the conflicted emotions of the footman-turned-Jacobin Gérard, sung here with steely determination and fervour by Dimitri Platanias.
On the eve of her 70th birthday Rosalind Plowright invested the ancien régime Contessa di Coigny with formidable dignity.
Sets and costumes (by Robert Jones and Jenny Tiramani) are of the period, complete with sans-culottes and liberty caps. While aristocrats and Jacobins alike are condemned by their own words and actions, McVicar’s production is innocent of any irony, postmodern perspective or social comment — unless the venom of the mob be taken as a critique of modern-day populism. One for traditionalists, then — paradoxically for a work about revolution.
Singers are permitted to stand and deliver but with Daniel Oren whipping up the orchestra, you’d need a heart of stone not to feel a flutter as the lovers emote their way to the guillotine.
Until June 9 (020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk)
