Andrea Chénier with Carmen Paddock

It’s all fun and games until the guillotine gets weird. In honor of Bastille Day, critic Carmen Paddock joins us to talk about Umberto Giordano’s verismo (?) opera about a poet who negs a debutante at a party, and her subsequent ability to take ride-or-die to new extremes during the French Revolution.  We also discuss the real hero or Andrea Chénier, who is (as in so many operas) actually the baritone.

Additional topics include: sopranos melting down on Instagram, John McWhorter melting down over John Cage, and Charlotte Corday melting down over Jean-Paul Marat.

Follow Carmen on Bluesky, Instagram, and Substack.

Full episode page for Andrea Chénier on Decanonized.com.

Follow Decanonized on Instagram at @decanonized and on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/Decanonized