La mamma morta: Andrea Chenier

We have already looked at this famous aria from Umberto Giordano's 1896 opera Andrea Chenier (the same year as Puccini's La Boheme). The librettist of Chenier was Luigi Illica, who also worked on La Boheme (and Tosca and Madam Butterfly) in collaboration with Giuseppe Giacosa. Now let's look a bit more at the opera itself, some of the music, some new voices and a new style of opera.

Giordano composed several operas but remains a bit of a one hit wonder. Andrea Chenier 

(first name pronounced An-dray-a) tells the story of a liberal poet in revolutionary France. Chenier was, in fact, a real person, and some details of his life can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre Chenier In the opera he falls in love with the noblewoman, Maddalena di Coigny (who sings the aria La mamma morta) who is also loved by the revolutionary leader and former servant, Carlo Gerard. When Chenier is arrested, Maddalena offers herself to Gerard in exchange for Chenier's life. Despite signing the warrant for Chenier's arrest, seeing her love moves Gerard but his pleas to the committee are in vain and Chenier is sent to be executed. Maddalena forges papers so that she and Chenier can face the guillotine together.

The love triangle, the exchange of a life for sex, the final scene set in a prison, the casting of a revolutionary tenor with an officer baritone and a vulnerable soprano has often led to Chenier being compared to Tosca. In some ways, the characters in Chenier are more complicated. Gerard is not an out-and-out villain like Scarpia: he is a man of ideals, who abuses his position and is ashamed and disgusted with himself; Maddalena is a young woman, innocent of the world whose eyes are quickly opened to love, shame and poverty; Chenier's love and understanding of his fellow man is much more evident than that of Cavaradossi. So what makes Tosca one of the world's most popular operas, and Andrea Chenier a work on the edge of the repertoire? The answer, of course, is the music.

Puccini was a great melodist, dramatist and manipulator. Tosca has thrust and compulsion; Chenier does not. Nor does it have the same level of tunefulness. But each of the three main parts needs singers who can sing: they are juicy parts with some great tunes and each aria is a show stopper. It is just that the tunes do not come as easily, nor are they quite as memorable or as memorably used as Puccini would do. Chenier needs singers with "star power" to pull it off most successfully, in a way that Tosca does not.


Before looking at some of the music of Chenier, here is perhaps his best known "other" piece. From his opera Fedora, here is the tenor aria Amor ti vieta, sung by Placido Domingo:

The aria is but 90 seconds long, and it's hard to deny that if the highlight of your opera is but a 90 second aria, you have a bit of a problem and a lack of tunes or drama.


As with Tosca, Chenier calls for heavier, more dramatic voices (often called spinto), whereas La Boheme is often sung by more lyrical voices. The orchestration is thicker with more instruments, and the roles are longer so the voices need more weight and muscle to carry over the larger orchestra into the auditorium. The voice is a muscle, and just as some athletes are more suited to the 100m than the marathon, so some voices are light and lyrical and some more dramatic. Often, singers will use a technique called squillo to help their voices to carry: it's something that, with more familiarity, is easier to hear than to describe. Squillo has been variously described as a ring, a ping, a trumpet sound, a laser-like quality to the voice. 


Now let's look at some of the music. In the first act, Maddalena goads Chenier into speaking of love, and he improvises a poem. This aria, Un di all'azzurro spazio, also known as the Improvviso (or Improvisation) is a real gift for the tenor, both from a musical and dramatic point of view. It also shows how Giordano could come up with a great sweeping tune but not always know what to do with it. 


Pavarotti here is in the late stages of his career, but still produces some magical singing, even though he shouts a bit in parts:

Here is Domingo (but the sound and picture are a bit out of sync): you can hear how there is not only much more brightness to Pavarotti's sound, but more of a piercing, sharper quality, a sound that we would associate with a squillo technique. (Domingo, though, gets a massive ovation.)

Two tenors notable for their squillo were Mario del Monaco and Franco Corelli, both of whom made Chenier a speciality. Here is del Monaco, shamelessly grandstanding to the crowd, showing off his high notes and holding them for as long as he can. Some may say this is cheap: others that it offers the thrill that you would want in a live performance, never to be repeated. 

Here is Franco Corelli:

As you may have gathered, I never bore of this aria. The tune may be a long time coming, but it has such sweep and the aria offers such opportunity for variety and personality that it is always refreshing to listen to. 

Here is Canadian tenor Jon Vickers, who was known for having a huge voice and singing with great intelligence. Despite its size, I always find a softness to his voice, as though it floats in the air, and some of his phrasing and long breaths here are extraordinary.

Of course, we can't have examples of a tenor aria without including Jonas Kaufmann, whose voice has shades of both Corelli and Vickers: there are times on certain vowel sounds where the likeness with Vickers is uncanny. Here then is Jonas (his diminuendo on firmamento at 1'25 is unique among the versions I've posted, but how I wish he had held the high note on T'amo/ I love you at 1'59 just a fraction longer):

Moving on to the third act, we come to the main aria for the baritone, Gerard: Nemico della patria? / An enemy of the people?  in which he signs the accusation that condemns Chenier before reflecting on how his hopes and dreams have vanished. Again, the big sweeping tune seems to come right at the end of the aria and once again we have a rousing climax and a clear "full stop" at the end.


I first saw Andrea Chenier on video with Domingo, Anna Tomowa-Sintow as Maddalena and Giorgio Zancanaro as Gerard from Covent Garden. Zancanaro seemed to hit a peak in the mid 80s with a number of recordings but, perhaps encumbered by his weak acting (both vocally and physically), never seemed to quite make it as a superstar. Nevertheless, I find his dark, rich voice quite wonderful to listen to and I only wish that more performances of his were available. 

Zancanaro's rich baritone voice is typical of a Verdi baritone, a baritone that is dark and strong: a vocal equivalent of chocolate or mahogany, perhaps. Here is another celebrated Verdi baritone, Piero Cappuccilli, also noted for his breath control and noble sound, tackling the same aria, and from the same performance as Domingo's Improvviso above, earning an even longer ovation:

Shortly afterwards, Maddalena appears to plead for Chenier's life. Where Tosca offers her prayer, Vissi d'arte, Maddalena recounts her story in La mamma morta. From the Covent Garden video, here is Anna Tomowa-Sintow:

Tomowa-Sintow's voice is rather creamy. For a singer with more squillo, here is Renata Scotto:

The opera ends with Chenier and Maddalena singing a love duet before being trundled off to their deaths. And once again, we have a theme of great sweep and lift that needs to be really sung to have its full effect. Pavarotti with Maria Guleghina:

Jonas with Eva-Maria Westbroek (and conductor Antonio Pappano speaking as the jailer):

Like Tosca, a performance of Chenier should be thrilling: we're not really here for subtlety but for star singers singing the most out of the music. It should be one of those operas that gives you goosebumps.


Giordano is often thought of as a verismo composer. This was a movement in Italian opera around the turn of the twentieth century where composers looked for subjects that dealt less with kings and queens and the realism (or verismo) of the average man and woman on the street. We shall look more at verismo in another blog.


You can watch the performance of Andrea Chenier with Domingo and Cappuccilli in chunks starting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u7t1p2uMUA  A complete version, without subtitles, can also be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i13bSOGFkfc