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Eugene Onegin

“…Gerald Finley was the indisputable star of the evening, singing the title role for the first time yet giving a world-class performance. Indeed, few other recent Onegins come to mind as competition...” Opera

Composer	Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Libretto	The composer and Konstantin Shilovsky, after Pushkin’s poem
Venue and Dates	Coliseum, London 10, 14, 17, 20, 22, 25 June 2005
Conductor	Jonathan Darlington
Director	Julia Hollander

Performers	Eugene Onegin: Gerald Finley Lensky: Gwyn Hughes Jones Tatyana: Catrin Wyn-Davies Olga: Louise Poole Prince Gremin: Peter Rose Madame Larina: Yvonne Howard Filippyevna: Susan Gorton Monsieur Triquet: John Graham-Hall Zaretsky: Graeme Danby Chorus and Orchestra of the English National Opera
Production	Sets: Fotini Dimou
Notes

What the critics say

Anthony Holden for The Observer, June 19, 2005

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/observer/story/0,,1509602,00.html

…At the Coliseum, the arrival of Gerald Finley in the title role of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin also revitalises a 1994 staging by Julia Hollander. Acting with as much forceful conviction as he sings, Finley turns Onegin into a more sympathetic figure than usual, his world-weary older self, affectingly aware what a klutz he was in his heedless youth.

Fotini Dimou's elegant designs set the tone for a handsome evening, in which the ENO chorus excels itself amid generally strong singing (and dancing), despite a pallid, underwhelming Lensky from Gwyn Hughes Jones. Jonathan Darlington conducts Tchaikovsky's sumptuous score with sufficient panache to buttress the few weak points in a show deserving more than five performances.

Tim Ashley for The Guardian, June 14, 2005

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/critic/review/0,,1505712,00.html

Four stars out of five

The main reason you need to see English National Opera's revival of Eugene Onegin is Gerald Finley's startling performance in the title role. It is a remarkable achievement. Finley redefines Tchaikovsky's antihero as an essentially tragic figure and, in so doing, redefines our responses to the work. Our sympathies usually lie with Tatyana, while an inflated sense of our own moral superiority causes us, more often than not, to judge Onegin as heartless or stupid. Finley swings our sympathies round, so that the tragedy is as much his as hers.

He presents Onegin as essentially blind to his own nature, establishing at the outset the inner conflict between his barely conscious attraction to Catrin Wyn-Davies's Tatyana and his desire for independence. When he tells her he is not contemplating marriage and that he loves her "only as a brother", it's both a statement of fact and a revelation of his lack of self-awareness - not a calculating put-down. And Lensky's death provokes a blinding insight into Onegin's own destructiveness. Later, when he re-encounters the now married Tatyana, he is a broken man, grovelling at her feet in the agonised knowledge of how he has wrecked people's lives, including his own. Finley sings it with an easy beauty of tone, and his diction is exceptional - a reminder that ENO would not be faced with its surtitle controversy if more of its singers could project the words.

The rest of the production is uneven. Wyn-Davies beautifully charts Tatyana's development from sensual teenager to moral woman, but sounds too mature in the early scenes. Gwyn Hughes Jones is a gauche Lensky, more forthright and less poetic than most. And there is some wonderfully cogent conducting from Jonathan Darlington. However, Julia Hollander's staging, with its mixture of naturalism and symbolism, sits uneasily with the work, which cries out for realism. It's Finley's night, however. Just go and hear him.

Maya Lester, Times Literary Supplement (extracts), June 2005

http://www.onlinereviewlondon.com/reviews/onegin2.html

…In my view there are three problems with Julia Hollander's production (now revived by the ENO for the third time), and one major draw which makes up for them. First, she tries to make up for the lack of theatricality and movement in the story with acting that is so over the top that I can only describe it as hammy. In another letter Tchaikovsky said that he wrote the opera sincerely, to express a human feeling (himself in total despair at a loveless marriage). But rather than conveying an intensely moving tale of sincere love and rejection, this feels like a series of teenage crushes, like one of Tatyana's slushy novels, with which the sincerity of the real thing should be juxtaposed and not likened. The second problem is the conventional staging, which although attractive, does nothing to add depth. The third is the clanging rhymes of David Lloyd Jones's translation. It is ironic that at the time of the ENO's decision to introduce sur-titles they should stage a production whose words are entirely lucid, but left me wishing it had been in Russian.

However, the huge success is the superb singing and conducting. Gerard Finley in particular is sublime, but there is not a weak link among the cast. This is a hugely pleasurable concert, but not an intense emotional experience.

Extracts from a review by Colin Clarke for Seen and Heard 14 June, 2005

http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2005/Jan-Jun05/onegin1406.htm

…The performance existed on two strata. Vocally it was dominated by Gerald Finley, everything one could want from an Onegin, with the other voices supporting him to varying degrees of success. Orchestrally (the other stratum), there was a linear progression from some distinctly ropey playing at the opening through to a charged and beautiful finale.

The chorus, beautifully balanced though it was, made the perfect case for surtitles at ENO, even though the works are performed in English. Luckily, diction from the three major soloists of the first part of the first Tableau, Yvonne Howard (Madame Larina), Louise Poole (Olga) and Catrin Wyn-Davies (Tatiana) was exemplary. Howard's Larina was lovely and matronly, a cuddly mother-figure with a mezzo voice that could occasionally and rightly veer towards the contralto. Both Olga and Tatiana were pictures to look at. Vocally, their voices worked well together; further, when the two joined Lensky and Onegin in ensemble, it revealed the true strength of ENO as a company.

No one could hope that individually all would be equal, however. Gwyn Hughes Jones' Lensky was rather provincial, rather bleaty (a trait that was to affect his scene in Act II – his way with the all-pervading descending scale theme was rather superficial, too), making the difference in standard between himself and Finley all the more obvious. Finley did not put a foot wrong all night. If forced to pick a highlight, perhaps his Act III monologue, as dolente as they come, would be this writer's choice – but there were so many moments to choose from.

His Tatiana, Catrin Wyn-Davies, sounded marvelously youthful. Her Letter Scene was fairly involving and – importantly – eminently believable. Her voice is capable of a really large sound (as in the third scene) yet she can thin it to a thread, too. Louise Poole's Olga was acceptable, if a little wobbly in Act II. John Graham-Hall was a fun Monsieur Triquet (he sang his song in French). But if one character was to approach (if not match) Finley, it was Peter Rose's focused, resonant Prince Gremin. No surprise to learn that his future plans include Gurnemanz in Vienna and Hamburg. His pitching was spot-on, his aria exuding lyric calm. The final scene between Onegin and Tatiana was amazingly moving. The dramatic use of space came into its own here. The stage was almost bare, the very emptiness emphasizing the chasm now between the two characters after all that has happened.

…Jonathan Darlington, Music Director of both Vancouver Opera and the Duisberg Philharmonic and making his ENO debut with this run of performances, showed real affinity to the contours of Tchaikovsky's take on Pushkin. The orchestra clearly warms to him (literally in the sense that they warmed up as the evening progressed). He will, I am sure, be welcomed back. But the evening belonged to the titular hero, Onegin in a Finleyesque incarnation. Do try to catch a performance of this quality production.

Andrew Clark for the Financial Times (extracts), June 27 2005

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1c1bf596-e6a7-11d9-b6bc-00000e2511c8.html

Fierce battles over words and music

After all the bloodletting and trendy initiatives of recent months, it is a relief to find that English National Opera is still capable of getting some things right. Eugene Onegin jolted London's second opera company to an end-of-season high. The production may be 11 years old, and its focus broadly traditional, but it reminded us better than anything of the vital purpose ENO serves.

Everything about this Onegin was understandable, both linguistically and emotionally. It was cast with care and there was a keen sense of ensemble. A packed audience at the Coliseum, many newcomers who had paid just £10, was on tenterhooks as Onegin flung himself at Tatiana's feet in the final scene in a desperate attempt to win the heart he had rebuffed. Tchaikovsky's opera was revealed as the masterpiece it is and ENO rediscovered in itself a communal inspiration…

…In Eugene Onegin some singers' diction was better than others, but the whole point of opera is that the music tells you everything the words don't convey. In its ecstasies of longing and agonies of remorse, ENO's Onegin was enough to make anyone succumb to opera again and again.

Rupert Christiansen for The Telegraph, 17 June 2005

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/06/17/btbart17.txt.xml

…ENO's revival of Julia Hollander's attractive, if anodyne, production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, robustly conducted by Jonathan Darlington, is worth catching for Gerald Finley's magnificent debut in the title role. His firm line, rich but clean tone and impeccable diction provided a master class in the art of singing.

Unfortunately, Finley was paired against a blowsy Tatyana (Catrin Wyn Davies) and a charmless Lensky (Gwyn Hughes Jones), and only Yvonne Howard (Larina) and Peter Rose (Gremin) came anywhere near his class. David Lloyd-Jones's prim translation sounds ludicrous, full of the worst sort of operatic gentility.

John Allison, Opera, August 2005

[performance on June 14 ]

As the first production to open at ENO after the controversial surtitles announcement, this revival of Julia Hollander's 1994 production of Tchaikovsky's masterpiece was surely scrutinized more closely than most for its word-count. But 'scrutiny' was hardly necessary: the words of David Lloyd-Jones's translation leapt from the stage with a communicativeness that made this one of the company's most heart-wrenching performances in a long time. Surtitles would have absolutely destroyed its dramatic intensity. Some of Fotini Dimou's designs appear to have been watered down over the last 11 years-the flimsier scenes now resemble a raid on the Novgorod branch of Ikea-and in Act I the chorus (singing strongly under Matthew Morley's direction) is saddled with too much folksy gesture, but overall this was a very respectable revival, exactly what ENO should be doing.

And rather than installing surtitles in pursuit of some mythical audience, ENO should be casting on this level more often-audiences would flock here if more performances carried this kind of vocal conviction. Despite a fine level all round, Gerald Finley was the indisputable star of the evening, singing the title role for the first time yet giving a world-class performance. Indeed, few other recent Onegins come to mind as competition, for Finley combined his dark, smooth tone with incisive delivery and riveting stage presence; so much about the character was said just in the way he held his head, for instance. The final act saw him truly tortured, with the end resembling something of a mad scene for baritone. But nothing was overdone in this perfectly judged account of a role that suits him far better than his other recent London assumption, Giorgio Germont.

It was very good, too, to hear Catrin Wyn-Davies's first Tatyana, for she supplied the kind of glamorous soprano tone seldom heard on the Coliseum stage these days. Her distinctive voice is not best suited to projecting words, yet from a passionate Letter Scene onwards she was a totally involved and involving heroine. Louise Poole made a heart-warming ENO debut as Olga, a bubbly, flaxen-haired country girl with an evenly focused mezzo, and if Gwyn Hughes Jones was a little generalized as Lensky, he still sang well. John Graham-Hall was the unforgettable Monsieur Triquet, sending up the character with gentle hilarity, where many singers go too far; coming not long after his Mime on the same stage, this was a reminder of what an incredibly versatile and valuable artist he is. With Peter Rose a warm Gremin, Yvonne Howard as Madame Larina, Susan Gorton as Filippyevna and no less solid a singer than Graeme Danby in the small role of Zaretsky, this was an unusually good cast. In the pit, Jonathan Darlington made a good ENO debut, even if in the early scenes he was inclined to let the orchestra (winds especially) drown the singers. He drew warm playing and tightened the dramatic screw in all the right places, building things to a shattering end.