Antonio Pappano’s final production as the Royal Opera’s music director is a revival of David McVicar’s 2015 staging of Andrea Chénier, Umberto Giordano’s 1896 examination of the relationship between desire and fanaticism, set during the French Revolution. It’s a thrilling account of an often remarkable work that sends you out into the street feeling elated and slightly jittery.
Pappano’s interpretation has shifted with time. What in 2015 was a slow burn has now become a thing of extremes, magnificently shaped, the high emotional pitch relentlessly sustained. Grand passions and political fervour are repeatedly elided in this music, as crowds acclaim revolutionary leaders with an uneasy rapture not far removed from the sensuality of lovers’ meetings. Elsewhere the ancien régime dies to mock Rameau, its faded elegance replaced by the revolutionary Ça Ira hurled out by the brass with terrifying exhilaration. Pappano is unsparing with it all, by turns lyrical and furiously energetic, and the playing can only be described as sensational.
