It has been said that to find truly dramatic music, one must look to opera. The night before French poet Andrea Chenier's impending execution, his lover Madeleine comes to the prison at St. Lazare and, wishing to die rather than live without him, manages through bribery to exchange places with a young woman who, like Chenier, is scheduled to mount the scaffold the following day. James Curnow fully utilizes his considerable orchestration skill with this immensely powerful transcription of Giordano's best known work.