Reply To: Music

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February 15, 2023 at 3:07 am #240369
twc
Participant

Andrea Chénier

Opera by Umberto Giordano (1896)

French poet and revolutionary, Andrea Chénier, is condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal during the Reign of Terror. His prosecutor is a rival for the hand of his lover, Maddalena, who trades places with a condemned woman, to engineer her own guillotining alongside her only love Chénier.

All highly melodramatic (and similar to Puccini’s greater opera Tosca of 1900).

* * *
Here is Jonas Kaufmann in the title role — Vienna State Opera.

At a palace ball, on the eve of the Revolution, the aristocratic Maddalena goads poet Andrea Chénier into improvising a verse, whereupon he slowly transforms the lyrics into an attack on the First Estate (the clergy) for its depredations against the poor.

https://youtu.be/MewNJOLlGow

Philadelphia — (1993)

In the movie Philadelphia, a lawyer Andy (Tom Hanks), diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, is represented by a black colleague Joe (Denzel Washington) in a legal battle over his discriminatory dismissal from work.

In hospital, the ailing Andy listens to Maria Callas singing Maddalena’s aria “La Mamma Morte” (They killed my Mother) from Andrea Chénier.

As he experiences the music Andy involuntarily relays to a skeptical Joe the hold that it has over him, and the emotional charge he gets from Maddalena’s affirmation-of-life midst tragedy.

In the opera, Maddalena is seeking a sympathetic hearing from Revolutionary Tribunal prosecutor Gérade, but she doesn’t stand a chance against dictatorial authority. (Even Puccini’s Tosca fails to out-manoeuvre the arch-manipulator Scarpia.)

Maddalena pleads…

The mob murdered my mother, burnt our family home, my maid voluntarily prostituted herself for my sake, I’m to blame, … but I know that love will conquer all.

All this is [beyond] music to Andy’s ears.

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