Chénier tra storia e creazione artistica

In the international opera repertoire, Andrea Chénier by Umberto Giordano, on libretto by Luigi Illica, is perhaps the most performed work based on French revolutionary history. The article addresses the problematic relationship between the fictional characters, as we find them in the theatrical text, and their historical reality. In particular, the attention is focused on the leading role of the opera, the well known poet André Chénier, guillotined in 1794 on the eve of Thermidor. The paper aims to offer a more complex representation of his personality: not only as a homme de lettres destined to aposthumous celebrity, but also, especially for his contemporaries, as a journalist and intellectual engagé involved in all major conflicts and ideological issues of the revolutionary years. [Publisher's text].