If you like... then you'll LOVE Andrea Chénier!

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Unless you're an opera buff, you probably haven't heard of Andrea Chénier. But most people have already felt exactly what Chénier feels like.

Giordano's opera (OperaDelaware's company premiere this May at The Grand Opera House in Wilmington) is one of the most emotionally devastating works in the repertoire. A historical drama/love story set against the French Revolution. A poet falls for a noblewoman. A revolutionary tears them apart. The guillotine is never far away.

If any of the following stories have brought you to tears, Andrea Chénier will too.

If you like Les Misérables… then you'll LOVE Andrea Chénier

Les Misérables gives you the French Revolution as a canvas for the eternal struggle between justice and power, love and loss, the individual and the state. Andrea Chénier lives in the same world... but instead of Valjean, you get a poet (Andrea Chénier). Instead of Javert, you get a revolutionary (Carlo Gérard) who starts out righteous and loses his way. And instead of "One Day More," you get a final duet ("Vicino a te") that will absolutely destroy you.

Both stories ask the same question: what does it cost a person to stay true to what they believe? Andrea Chénier answers it in four acts and goes straight for the throat.

If you like Philadelphia… then you'll LOVE Andrea Chénier

You already know the scene. Tom Hanks. Maria Callas. "La mamma morta."

That aria, the one that made an entire generation feel opera for the first time without realizing it, is Maddalena di Coigny's aria. It is the moment she describes losing everything and finding, in the wreckage, the will to survive because of love.

This May, Toni Marie Palmertree sings it live at The Grand Opera House. Fresh off her principal role debut at The Metropolitan Opera, she brings Maddalena to OperaDelaware's company premiere of the opera that gave Philadelphia its most unforgettable scene.

You already know how it feels to hear it. Come feel it in the room.

If you like Hamilton… then you'll LOVE Andrea Chénier

Hamilton gives you a writer in the middle of a revolution, a man who cannot stop putting words on the page even when it costs him everything. Andrea Chénier gives you the same thing — but set in France, two years before Hamilton was even born.

Chénier is a poet who shocks an aristocratic party with an improvised poem about the suffering of the poor. He is imprisoned not for what he did, but for what he wrote. His final aria before the guillotine is drawn directly from the real André Chénier's last poem, written in his prison cell the night before his execution.

Hamilton asked what it means to be "in the room where it happens." Andrea Chénier asks what it costs to tell the truth when the room wants you silent.

If you like A Tale of Two Cities… then you'll LOVE Andrea Chénier

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Dickens could have been writing the libretto. Andrea Chénier is set in exactly the world of A Tale of Two Cities—the French Revolution at its most violent and idealistic, a society consuming itself in the name of liberty, and at the center of it all, a man of conviction facing the guillotine for a woman he loves.

If Sydney Carton's final sacrifice has ever moved you, Andrea Chénier will feel like coming home. It is the same story, set to music that makes it hit harder than any novel ever could.

Come hear it for yourself.

OperaDelaware's company premiere of Andrea Chénier runs May 10, 13, and 15 at The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware.

Tickets at operade.org/tickets

Viva la morte insiem! — Andrea Chénier

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There's a moment at the end of Andrea Chénier that stops time.

The poet Andrea Chénier has been condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal. He's going to the guillotine in the morning. And Maddalena di Coigny (the woman he loves, the woman whose world the Revolution destroyed) walks into the prison and buys her way onto the death list so she can die beside him.

The jailer reads the name of a woman who has already been condemned. Maddalena steps forward and says: that's me. I am her.

And then, together, Chénier and Maddalena face what's coming saying "La nosta morte é il trionfo dell'amor!" or "Our death is the triumph of love!" culminating in either the most romantic thing ever written or the most devastating, depending on the moment you're in:

Viva la morte insiem!

Long live death together!

We've imprinted this on the guillotine on our artwork for a reason. Not because opera is morbid (though sometimes it is) but because that line contains the entire argument of the opera. That love, at its most absolute, is not about survival. That there are things worth more than living carefully. That choosing to go into the dark beside someone you love is, in Giordano's hands, an act of fierce, irrational, completely human beauty.

OperaDelaware performs this opera for the first time this May. Our company premiere of Andrea Chénier opens May 10 at The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, presented as part of the OPERA America National Conference.

The cast is extraordinary. Let us tell you who's in it.

Dane Suarez as Andrea Chénier

The title role requires a very specific kind of tenor. Chénier is a poet, an idealist, a man who speaks in fire and dies unbroken (and the voice has to match.) It has to be large enough to carry the full weight of Giordano's orchestration, supple enough to honor the text, and present enough that when Chénier delivers "Un dì all'azzurro spazio" in Act I, the audience understands immediately why people stop and listen when he speaks.

Dane Suarez is an inaugural Company Artist at OperaDelaware, and a dramatic tenor whose "big, heroic voice" and "powerful emotions" (LA Weekly), have earned him recognition for commanding performances in the Italian repertoire and beyond. Critics have called his voice "a proper can-belto Italianate tenor" (The Spectator) and praised his "resonant, secure voice" and gift for combining vocal power with committed dramatic presence.

He made his acclaimed international debut with Wexford Festival Opera in 2024, where his Don Ferolo Whiskerandos (Stanford's The Critic) was celebrated across European press, with The Irish Times, The Stage, Bachtrack, and Seen and Heard International all singling him out. He also appeared in solo recital on the mainstage of the National Opera House. That same season, he earned strong notices as Lord Percy in Anna Bolena with Resonance Works, with OnStage Pittsburgh calling it "some of the most impressive singing of the evening," and returned to Lensky with Opera Columbus to reviews praising his "beautiful, rounded tenor tone" and "surging bluster." Recent engagements also include The Phoenix Symphony (Handel's Messiah en Español), Erie Philharmonic (Verdi's Requiem), and a return to his signature Don José with Opera Memphis.

His 2025/26 season marks major role debuts as Radamès (Aïda) with Opera Southwest, Giovanni (La hija de Rappaccini) with Opera Columbus, where Columbus Underground praised his "spectacular" singing throughout, and the title role in Andrea Chénier with OperaDelaware, a role built for exactly his voice. This summer he debuts with Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre, returning to his acclaimed Scalia in his fifth production of Scalia/Ginsburg and singing Richard Henry Lee in 1776. He is a grant recipient of The Olga Forrai Foundation supporting exceptionally large, dramatic voices in opera, he made his Off-Broadway debut at Soho Rep. in the world premiere of Kate Tarker's Montag, and is a former Resident Artist of Opera San José.

Learn more about Dane here: danesuarez.com

Toni Marie Palmertree as Maddalena di Coigny

The role of Maddalena asks a soprano to make a journey across the full width of human experience in roughly two hours. She begins the opera as an aristocrat's daughter, sheltered and a little skeptical. She ends it choosing death. The music has to carry both ends of that arc, and everything in between.

Toni Marie Palmertree is one of the most compelling soprano voices in American opera right now. A graduate of the Adler Fellowship Program at San Francisco Opera and alumna of the Merola Opera Program, she has performed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Festival Opera New Zealand, among others. She is a recipient of the Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation and The Olga Forrai Foundation, and is a district winner of The Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition.

She has been associated with the role of Cio-Cio San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly for years, performing it at San Francisco Opera, Florida Grand Opera, West Bay Opera, and Palm Beach Opera, among others. Critics have described her soprano as capable of producing what one reviewer called "voluminous, spine-chilling swells of sound." In March of this year, she made her principal role debut at the Metropolitan Opera in that very same role. She reprises her signature portrayal in her return to The Princeton Festival this summer.

That's the kind of cast we've built.

Toni Marie has been part of this company's identity for years now and continues to make an impact as a Company Artist. Audiences will remember her "radiant" Mimì in La bohème from last season and her steadfast Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro (2022).

Toni Marie's recent principal role debut at The Met has garnered much press attention; read her recent OperaWire feature here: https://operawire.com/how-motherhood-career-gaps-stage-iv-cancer-led-toni-marie-palmertree-to-her-met-opera-debut/

Gerard Moon as Carlo Gérard

Gérard is the most complicated character in the opera. A servant turned revolutionary turned judge, he ends the opera having signed the death warrant of the man whose poetry once moved him... and having done it for reasons that are not illogical. The baritone singing this role has to make you understand those motivations.

Gerard Moon is also an inaugural Company Artist at OperaDelaware and a South Korean-born baritone praised by OperaWire for the authority, command, and stage presence he brings from the moment he walks on stage. His repertoire spans the full breadth of the dramatic baritone canon: Figaro, Germont, Rigoletto, the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro, Ford in Falstaff, Don Giovanni and Leporello, Dr. Miracle in Tales of Hoffmann. He has studied and performed across the United States, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, and throughout Asia.

Gérard's signature aria ("Nemico della patria") is one of the great baritone moments in the verismo repertoire: a monologue in which a man argues himself into betraying everything he once believed... and has to make you feel the logic of it. Moon has had this aria in his concert repertoire, which means he knows this music from the inside. But May will mark his role debut as Gérard in full production.

Fun fact: Moon chose the name Gerard when he came to the United States due to his love of this opera and this role in particular. Do you have your tickets yet?!

The Full Company

Andrea Chénier is an ensemble opera -- it requires a full company firing on all cylinders, from the featured roles to the comprimario singers who populate the world of Revolutionary Paris. OperaDelaware's production features: Taylor-Alexis DuPont as Bersi, Max Zander as L'Incredibile, Brian James Myer as Mathieu, Dylan Gregg as Roucher, Daryl Freedman as Madelon, Lauren Cook as Contessa di Coigny, Marcus DeLoach doing double duty as Fléville and Fouquier-Tinville, Douglas Rowland as L'abate, Dante Doganiero as Schmidt, and Dominic Walker as Il maestro di casa and Dumas.

Anthony Barrese, Conductor

Anthony Barrese has been OperaDelaware's Music Director since 2017. South Florida Classical Review has praised him for conducting "with passion and idiomatic fluency," and those of you who have heard him lead the OperaDelaware Orchestra know what that means in practice.

A recipient of The Solti Foundation U.S. Award for young conductors, Maestro Barrese is simultaneously a composer, conductor, and musicologist of serious standing. He made his operatic conducting debut in Milan and has since led productions at Sarasota Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera North, and The Dallas Opera, among many others. He is Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of Opera Southwest, where his tenure has included landmark productions: the world premiere of Franco Faccio's Amleto (a score Mo. Barrese himself rediscovered, edited, and prepared in conjunction with Casa Ricordi, not heard anywhere since 1871), the American staged premiere of Rossini's Otello with the finale lieto, a company premiere of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, and a world premiere of Bottesini's Alì Babà.

Andrea Chénier is one of the great late-Romantic scores: rich, demanding, built on long melodic lines and enormous climaxes. It needs a conductor who understands how to let singers breathe inside that orchestral weight without ever losing momentum. That's Maestro Barrese.

Check out an excerpt of Faccio's Amleto here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUqRiJqjI2i/

Octavio Cardenas, Stage Director

Octavio Cardenas was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and brings to his work a visual imagination and physical sensibility that Opera News has described as creating an "immersive theater experience." The Dallas Morning News praised him for bringing "every character and situation to life." Opera Today noted that he brings "an abundance of imaginative stage business" while skillfully honoring the performance traditions of signature moments. This is exactly the balance a production like Chénier requires.

His credits include La bohème for Minnesota Opera (the Star Tribune credited the production's success directly to his staging), Silent Night for Fort Worth Opera Association and Lyric Opera of Kansas City (described as "a breathtaking realization" and "one of its finest performances in recent memory"), Cruzar la cara de la Luna for Opera Santa Barbara, and the world premiere of Zorro by Hector Armienta for Opera Southwest. He previously worked with OperaDelaware on the Papermoon production of Il barbiere di Siviglia.

He holds an MFA in Theatre from UCLA and a Master of Music from the University of South Carolina. He is currently a professor of opera at the Eastman School of Music.

A director who understands both the theatrical and the operatic, who has worked with Mo. Barrese before, directing our company premiere of one of the most glorious verismo operas in the repertoire. We couldn't ask for better.

Come See It

OperaDelaware's company premiere of Andrea Chénier opens May 10 at The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, with additional performances May 13 and 15. The production is presented as part of the OPERA America National Conference (which is the world's largest gathering of opera administrators, artists, trustees, and advocates) to Wilmington that week.

This is a production we are proud of. A cast built for this music. A creative team that will breathe life into this incredible opera which has fallen out of the canon.

Viva la morte insiem!

Tickets at operade.org/2526-andrea-chenier

"I don't think I can bring my niece anymore."

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A few years ago, one of our board members came to see La traviata — one of Verdi’s most ravishing, heartbreaking operas. She loved it. She was moved. And then, on her way out, she pulled aside a staff member and said something that has stuck with us ever since.

“I’m not going to be able to bring my niece anymore if the woman is always going to die.”

We laughed. A little. And then we thought about it.

Because she wasn’t wrong.

Here’s the sequence, since OperaDelaware mounted La traviata in the spring of 2023:

La traviata (spring 2023): Violetta dies of consumption. Rigoletto (fall 2023): Gilda sacrifices herself to save a man who doesn’t deserve it. Turandot (spring 2024): Liù takes her own life rather than betray the man she loves. La bohème (fall 2024): Mimì dies of consumption. Fearless (spring 2025): A world premiere about the life (and death) of WWII Women Airforce Service Pilot Hazel Ying Lee. Tosca (fall 2025): Tosca jumps off a building. Andrea Chénier (spring 2026, coming this May): The tenor goes to the guillotine. Maddalena (choosing love over survival) goes with him.

Six-and-a-half years. Eight productions. And with the exception of Fearless, which grapples with real historical loss, every single leading woman either dies, sacrifices herself, or chooses death as her most dramatic available option.

We love these operas. We will keep programming them. The music is extraordinary and the drama is real and that is not changing.

But our board member wasn’t making a critical argument. She was making a personal one. She wanted to share something she loved with someone she loved. And she wasn’t sure the thing she loved would be welcoming to a new audience member who might reasonably look at the pattern and feel like opera wasn’t built for her.

That is the reason this concert exists.

Stayin’ Alive: A Night at the Opera Where Nobody Dies started as a bit of a joke. And then we started pulling the repertoire and realized: there is so much music. So much gorgeous, alive, joyful, complicated, aching music that exists in opera and musical theatre where the characters make it to the final bar.

We organized it into four sets, because we think survival itself has a kind of arc.

Survival by Wit — the Beaumarchais characters: Figaro, Rosina, Cherubino, Susanna. They’ve been outsmarting everyone around them across centuries. They outlive kings. They outlive revolutions. Wit, it turns out, is a remarkably durable survival strategy.

Survival by Pleasure — operetta, party pieces, and the songs that exist purely to celebrate being alive. The good wine. The good company. The decision to stay at the party.

Survival by Song — the American songbook tradition and its heirs. Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Adam Guettel (who is, not incidentally, Oscar Hammerstein’s grandson). Music that believes a song can carry you somewhere your own feet can’t reach. There is also, for reasons that felt right, a tap number.

Survival by Purpose — Sondheim. Who was more interested in what happens after you believe that love or courage will carry you through. When the dream gets complicated. When staying alive means deciding again, and again what you’re actually living for.

The evening closes with “Make Our Garden Grow,” from Bernstein’s Candide. Which is, in our view, one of the most quietly devastating arguments for community ever set to music. Nobody in it is fine. Everything has gone wrong. And the answer they arrive at is: tend the garden. Stay. Do the work. Together.

Company Artists Emily Margevich, Dane Suarez, and Gerard Moon are joined by mezzo-soprano Gina Perregrino and pianist Husan Chun-Novak. The program is an evening of survival stories — not because nobody suffers, but because everyone chooses to keep going.

If you’ve been looking for a way in, this is it. If you’ve been a believer for years, this is a reminder of why.

And if you have a niece — or a nephew, or a friend, or a skeptical partner, or a neighbor who’s always said they want to try opera but never quite gotten there — bring them Thursday night or Sunday afternoon. We built this one with them in mind.

Stayin’ Alive: A Night at the Opera Where Nobody Dies March 27 at 7:30 PM · March 29 at 2:00 PM OperaDelaware Studios in Wilmington!

Tickets are on sale now for Stayin' Alive, part of the OperaDelaware Studio Series programmed by our company artists: sopranos Emily Margevich and Toni Marie Palmertree, tenor Dane Suarez, and baritone Gerard Moon. And coming this May, we bring you the company premiere of Giordano's French Revolution masterpiece Andrea Chénier presented at the OPERA America Conference hosted by OperaDelaware in Wilmington.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our mailing list so you don't miss a beat at OperaDelaware.

Cabaret for Two: Love + Marriage (Yuri and Gerard's story)

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Written by Yuri Kim Moon

Gerard and I attended the same university. I was a sophomore at the time, and we were both in the concert choir. I was the accompanist, and Gerard sang in the bass section, but we didn’t really know each other well.

Yuri and Gerard in salzburg when they first began dating in 2004.

That summer, Gerard and I happened to both join the same summer program in the Czech Republic and Salzburg. Among all the participants, we both only knew each other. We started spending time together and talking more, and naturally, we grew close. After returning to Korea, we continued dating as a campus couple for three years. Around the time I graduated from college, we got married and then moved to the United States to continue our studies.

When we first started dating, one of the professors in our summer program said something we’ve never forgotten: falling in love is easy, but staying in love takes real effort. She also told us to look at each other with our eyes half open..not expecting perfection, but choosing to really see each other. I think what she was really saying was to look at each other’s good sides more than the bad ones. Over time, we’ve learned that marriage is about slowly growing into each other. Who we become together depends a lot on how we choose to treat one another every day. It means listening to the same stories like they’re new, being patient, and showing care in small ways. For us, love isn’t about giving love the way we want it, but learning to give it in the way the other person needs.

Yuri and Gerard returned to salzburg to celebrate their 10 year wedding anniversary in 2017.

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Cabaret for Two: Love + Marriage (Emily and Dylan's Story)

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Written by Emily Margevich, OperaDelaware Company Artist

Emily and Dylan began performing together and became friends 6 months before they started dating.

We met as students at the same music school, The Academy of Vocal Arts, in Philadelphia, September of 2022.

We liked each other as people immediately, and we always felt like we knew each other already. Whenever we spoke, it seemed like nothing else was going on anywhere around us. We became good friends in spring of 2023 doing Don Giovanni together at AVA, and we always were being goofy together and having fun.

We started writing to each other for weeks during the summer of 2023 while at different summer programs, and thus we got to really know each other. No one confessed any love, but we each separately had a feeling we’d be together soon, and forever.

We started dating in September of 2023 when the AVA school year started its season, as soon as we were back to Philly from the summer of writing.

Emily and Dylan replicating their earlier photo a year later at the same concert after they had started dating.

We loved being in the same place every day together through our studies. We were never apart, and we had so much fun sharing our AVA days together that entire school year season.

The surprise was successful when Dylan proposed on May 17, 2024 after my graduation recital by singing the song “You and I” from the movie Meet Me in St. Louis.

Since we’re both performers, we didn’t plan a wedding date for a while because we never knew where we’d be and for how long.

Truly helped by the fact that I have a full time job with OperaDelaware, a wedding date was able to be made and kept! One wedding will be in Illinois on April 12, and one wedding will be in Pennsylvania on June 28 of 2026.

Would you believe that we both have a lot of family in nearby small towns in the Midwest? Would you believe that Dylan’s cousin’s wife’s aunt was my grade school band teacher?! It’s true!! We have 12 year old cousins who became friends this year going to the same school, but we all only just found out that they’ll both be junior bridesmaids in our wedding party! Small world!!

All of the songs we’ve chosen for the Love and Marriage cabaret really encapsulate how we feel about each other. We’ll be reading poetry and speaking about our love during the concert. The song “Widmung”, for me, is exactly all that I feel for Dylan.

What Yuri wrote about putting the other person in your relationship first is so perfectly said and just exactly how we feel, too. The four of us have had such an endearing and fun time realizing that our love stories are very similar!

A friend asked us once what has been the most surprising part of dating each other, and we said that we were maybe not surprised but in awe of the fact that we never had to get used to each other; we felt very close and completely comfortable about everything immediately. Loving each other felt like an extension of ourselves had been connected and found. Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. To feel that you are on the true path of your life in finding your soul mate is the most grounded, most powerful perspective the universe has to offer.

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