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 genuinely not entirely wrong. The baritone singing this role has to make you understand all of it.
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 arts professionals) 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