Andrea Chénier, Royal Opera House, review: like a Carry On – but without the jokes

Who on earth could have predicted that a hoary old operatic melodrama set in revolutionary France would find resonance in the present where the pen as a weapon against bigotry and hypocrisy has suddenly achieved iconic status. But hold up, let’s not get carried away. We’re talking about Giordano’s Andrea Chénier. Though its eponymous poet does indeed extol free expression at the service of love, the sentiments — the voices of reason in a time of high anxiety — don’t run too deep. And so we’re back where we started, with a hoary old melodrama.

So how to stage something that only gets staged in the first place if you have an extraordinary trio of singers fully ripened for the occasion — including a tenor of dashing and heroic timbre who can cut a suitably sympathetic and romantic figure before Madame Guillotine does likewise with him. The paradox, of course, is that this brand of opera was dubbed verismo when nothing could have been further from the truth.