Composer Umberto Giordano wrote music that requires an opera house to commit to bringing together the best singers with an epic production value. Andrea Chénier asks for nothing less than Olympic-level singing, and the Met delivered. Sonya Yoncheva (as Maddalena di Coigny) and Piotr Beczała (as Chénier) handled the score’s daunting technical demands with assurance and considerable dramatic force. Ms. Yoncheva’s version of the famous “La mamma morta” was the emotional apex of the night, and I totally believed her as a forlorn woman longing for her lover and death with her superb acting.
The production’s traditional French Revolutionary design language suits the opera’s sweep. Costumes and sets were lavish, especially in Act I: aristocratic opulence rendered in rich fabrics and saturated color before the world collapses into the Revolution. It is the sort of visual world the Met excels at, and here it amplified the opera’s shifts from gilded salons to political terror.
This was not my first encounter with Giordano at the Met. I saw Fedora in 2023, also featuring Ms. Yoncheva and Mr. Beczała, and admired its similar lushness. Only recently did I realize that Andrea Chénier is the better-known work. Based on these two productions, I’m now firmly a Giordano devotee.
Opera: Andrea Chénier
Composer: Umberto Giordano
Venue: Metropolitan Opera
Date: December 13, 2025
Link: https://www.metopera.org/season/2025-26-season/andrea-chenier/
Opera Nerd 
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