Director, Ted Huffman; Set Designer, Hyemi Shin; Costume Designer, Astrid Klein; Lighting Designer, D. M. Wood. Conductor, Henrik Nánási. Eugene Onegin, Gordon Bintner; Tatyana, Kristina Mkhitaryan; Lensky, Liparit Avetisyan; Olga, Avery Amereau; Prince Gremin, Dmitry Belosselskiy (replaced by Brindley Sherrat); Madame Larina, Alison Kettlewell; Filipyevna, Rhonda Browne; Monsieur Triquet, Christophe Mortagne
In 1969 I went on a school trip to Russia and encountered the Soviet Union in all its ….well, remarkable presence. The Young Communists’ greeting party in Moscow, trips to Odessa, Yalta, Minsk, Kiev and Leningrad, a visit to the ballet…..the works…..I remember drinking in an Odessa bar with young Russians, my fellow school boys using German to talk to them (the Russians had served in East Germany). One of the things I took back with me from the trip, bought in a hard currency shop (and I’ve still got it in our sitting room) is a Melodiya recording of Eugene Onegin, my first encounter with the work. It has Vishnevskaya as Tatyana, and I played the harsh recording a lot, giving me a real understanding of the whiny Russian horns, the harsh trumpets and trombones, and the nasal oboe that were standard at the time in Russian orchestras.
I have only seen Onegin in two productions live on stage – I heard the work live first at Covent Garden in the Peter Hall production with Ileana Cotrubas and the Canadian singer Victor Braun, in the early 70’s, conducted, I think, by Solti, and then a fine performance in Vienna in 2015 with Netrebko, no less, as Tatyana, and Christopher Maltman as Onegin. I knew nothing about the work of the director of this new production at ROHCG (and indeed the same is true of most of the cast), but remembered with pleasure seeing the Stefan Herheim take on the Queen of Spades, brilliantly conducted by Pappano at ROHCG in 2019 on screen. So I hoped for something thought-provoking and intelligent, well-sung and played.
The production met or exceeded my expectations. Eugene Onegin is one of those operas which directors take liberties with at their peril – though you might have said the same of the Queen of Spades and look what Herheim made of that……. No doubt thinking of the requisite production longevity in an age of austerity, ROGCG managers, I am sure, breathed a sigh of relief when they saw what Ted Huffman and his team proposed to do with the opera, and they must have become positively enthusiastic when they realised that there were basically no sets – none of the court ballroom/country house sets and Pushkin-era props, but simply a blank open lightish floor and dark surrounds, as attached in the photo below. There was a raised long bench at the back which could act as a banqueting table or a low wall, and that, apart from some chairs and small tables, was that – some rather weird space age candelabras came down for the last scene, I should add, and M. Triquet had some balloons and balls for the party. Occasionally lights played on the backdrop, creating a an effect of clouds or mist. The entire cast was clothed in what amounted to modern dress, apart from arguably the nanny. There were one or two slight production oddities – a ginger haired woman who helped Tatyana write her letter but who certainly wasn’t Olga; and someone who might have been M. Tricquet wandered round the stage in the second half to no particular point
But essentially this was a very moving straightforward reading which I thought was excellent. The dark back and sides emphasised the claustrophobia of Tatyana’s country house, the night of letter writing and the darkness of the morning of the snowy duel (and there was snow…..). The direction team let the story unfold naturally, with the first scene’s Chekhov resemblances emphasised. A particular virtue of the production was the way chorus and dancers were handled – dancers and singers blended well, and there were some impressive stage pictures – eg the whirl of people in the country ball.
There are four problems to my mind about Eugene Onegin as a work, which this performance overcame to the extent any could. One is the awkward uneven length of the 7 scenes – you end up with a long first half or a long second, or two intervals – this production opted for the former (1,35 hours and 50 mins). The second is the irredeemably horrid nature of Onegin, who generates no sympathy whatsoever….. Gordon Bintner made the best possible case for this character Thirdly, things can seem to go a bit flat after the duel. It didn’t here because of the quality of singing by Onegin and Tatyana but was also due to the appearance of Brindley Sherratt (a sudden step-in from holiday for an ill Dmitry Belosselskiy) who sang his Gremin aria magnificently, with huge and convincing presence. The final problem, which Tchaikovsky himself recognised, is the episodic nature of the work, moving forward quickly with various different settings and times. I felt gripped throughout, though, by the quality of acting, singing and conducting.
Bintner, an up-and-coming Canadian had a beautiful burnished voice (though was he singing under the note at one or points?), big stage presence, good looking and effective actor. The opera is made or lost by the Tatyana, and Kristina Mkhitaryan was very impressive indeed. She’s a very commanding actor, she looks convincingly like a young woman, she has a powerful voice when needed, no Slavic wobble, and can sing most beautifully sotto voce. She was utterly convincing, and particularly outstanding in the last scene, in the dignity of her response to Onegin. Liparit Avetisyan as Lensky flung himself into the role as though it were Puccini and sang generously and well. I thought, of the rest of the cast, Alison Kettlewell as Mme Larina, and Filipyevna played by Rhonda Browne were particularly effective. I didn’t form a very positive view of Henrik Nanasi when he conducted the Flying Dutchman earlier in the year but the orchestra played magnificently for him today, all the climaxes well judged, strings warm and glowing and woodwind agile and plaintive. He kept things moving, which helps with tackling the episodic issue. The augmented chorus sounded very fine indeed, with an authentically Slavonic tinge.
The heart of the work is the Letter Scene and if that doesn’t impact upon and move you, the performance is lost. I thought it was wonderfully – really, very movingly – sung and took me back to my 17 year old self listening to the Melodiya recording for the first time, terribly touched by it, and remembering all the things I’d seen in that Soviet Union visit.
John's musical journey 