Umberto Giordano’s classic opera comes to life at Macao International Music Festival

Andrea Chénier , the best-known work by Umberto Giordano, one of the most significant verismo operatic composers, will be staged as the grand opening programme of this year’s Macao International Music Festival.

Flourishing in Italian opera in the late 19th century, verismo (“realism”) portrayed melodramatic stories inspired by everyday life, rather than focusing on God and mythologies.

The production at Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium on September 29 and October 1 also celebrates the 150th anniversary of Giordano’s birth.

Produced by Teatro Regio Torino, the four-act opera tells the passionate love story of patriotic poet Andrea Chénier and beautiful Maddalena from a noble family during the French revolution.

Revival director Vittorio Borrelli, who has years of operatic directorial experience in Turin, Italy, shares the beauty of Giordano’s works, his challenge of producing the classic verismo opera, and revisiting Macau.

Umberto Giordano is characterised by a strong sense of theatre, for the rich and generous melodic inventiveness of incisive accent, as well as for the spontaneous eloquence of suggestive and effective immediacy.