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Eugene Onegin
Photo: Clive Barda
"Gerald Finley easily stole the show in the title role..." Musicalcriticism.com
"One remarkable performance, that of Gerald Finley in the title role, stood out..." Evening Standard
“His was a wonderful portrayal, encompassing gracelessness and gracefulness, withdrawal and sexual charisma, loyalty and betrayal.” Seen & Heard
“It was Gerald Finley's Onegin that ultimately raised the temperature of this revival, the artist's stage presence magnificent and his voice thrilling: open-throated and expressive.” MusicOMH
“In the title role, Gerald Finley was, as ever, exemplary, his musicianship, artistry and technique beyond carping…” The Telegraph
“Gerald Finley establishes himself as the Onegin of choice with a performance of poise and vocal grace, as well as stage personality.” FT
“…mad, bad and dangerous-to-know Gerald Finley” The Times
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Composer |
Pyotr Tchaikovsky |
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Libretto |
The composer and Konstantin Shilovsky, after Pushkin’s poem |
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Venue and Dates |
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 8, 10, 14, 18, 20, 26 March, 1, 4, 7 April 2008 |
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Conductor |
Jirí Belohlávek (8, 10, 14, 18, 20, 26 March, 4 April) |
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Production |
Revival Director: Elaine Kidd Production: Steven Pimlott Designs: Anthony McDonald Lighting: Peter Mumford Choreography: Linda Dobell |
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Performers |
Tatyana:
Lensky: Piotr Beczala
Eugene Onegin: Gerald Finley (Due to a chest infection - on March 20th Mark Stone sang the final scene while a poorly GF mime-acted; Andrew Schroeder stepped in at short notice for the performance on 26th March)
Madame Larina:
Olga: Ekaterina Semenchuk
Filipievna: Elizabeth Sikora
Prince Gremin: Brindley Sherratt (8 March) Zaretsky: Vuyani Mlinde* M. Triquet: Robin Leggate |
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Notes |
Gerry's first Russian Onegin
Click the youtube link below to see the curtain call from 8 March 2008 |
Marina Poplavskaya in an interview with Dominic McHugh about this production http://www.musicalcriticism.com/interviews/poplavskaya-0208.shtml
And what’s it like working with Gerald Finley…?
‘Oh my God, he’s such a passionate man! He has a very big temperament and amazing warmth; it’s like there’s heat radiating from him. He’s a very moving Onegin; vocally, he produces the most elegant lines, and he’s beautifully moving onstage. At the same time, he’s a very strong male figure and you can really sense the character’s revolutionary spirit: parts of Onegin could almost be attached to the first Russian Revolution, when the free spirits and poets and artists rose up together to make life better. So I think his Onegin will be very individually interesting.’ Does she find it easy to break her heart for him? ‘Oh yes, immediately!’
Photos by Clive Barda
What the critics say
Dominic McHugh, musicalcriticism.com, 8 March 2008
http://www.musicalcriticism.com/opera/roh-onegin-0308.shtml
As anyone who attended the matinee opening performance of the Royal Opera's new production of Fidelio last May will know, opera in the afternoon can be a sleepy affair. The singers aren't quite at their vocal peak or properly relaxed; the orchestra doesn't play with such incision; even the audience seems to behave with less of a sense of occasion than at an evening performance.
Such was the case, too, at the opening performance of this first revival of Covent Garden's production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, originally seen in 2006. Tchaikovsky was better served here than Beethoven was in that Fidelio performance, and there was much to enjoy, but even so it was hard not to feel that the singers and orchestra took a long time to warm up and will probably shine a lot more on Monday night's official press show.
However, the main problem is that the late Steven Pimlott's production, here revived by Elaine Kidd in his memory, is just as cumbersome and vapid as when it was first shown. Not everyone will agree, but for me Antony McDonald's sets are for the most part both ugly and hopelessly impractical for an opera staging. Far from being a 'period production' as Elaine Padmore claims in the programme, it actually eschews all hopes of realism and grittiness and instead serves up a tacky white proscenium, a cardboard hill with green grass that is covered by white sheets later on to represent snow, and a river in which Tatyana and Olga splash themselves and which later freezes over for some random ice skating during the Polonaise, which is inexplicably staged outdoors. This latter scene, in fact, is a good example of how misguided the production is: it should be staged in a vibrant ballroom, where Onegin comes upon the now-married Tatyana unexpectedly in the crowd and is overwhelmed with frustrated passion – a moment of both physical and psychological claustrophobia – but Pimlott has it out in the open air.
The Russian peasants are given incredibly repetitive and perfunctory choreography and are costumed in spotlessly white national dress, apparently bought by the village in a job lot. The dance at Tatyana's nameday party is cramped at the front of the stage and is unbelievably static so that there is no sense of the private conversations and emotions taking place in the midst of a crowd scene of general happiness. Nor is this scene enhanced by the arrival of revellers dressed in animal outfits; this also undercuts the appearance of an actor in a far-too-cuddly bear costume in the skating scene (possibly the most risible thing I've seen since the horrors of Parsifal in December). Tatyana's Letter Scene is still a mess, taking place in a small bedroom set which is dragged off through the river by Russian peasants in Wellington boots. Tatyana spends very little time writing the letter (an act which takes place on the bed - not the most practical place to choose, one would think), instead stepping out of the room and sitting on a step for the majority of her glorious soliloquy. The duel scene is more atmospheric, taking place on a grey, bleak and snowy landscape, but on the whole it's difficult to rate this production as a satisfactory rendering of the plot, let alone an insightful interpretation of the text.
Though I imagine he'll sing with even more vocal resplendence in the evening performances during the run, Gerald Finley easily stole the show in the title role and, regardless of the question asked by Áine Sheil in her programme note ('Why…is it [not] called Tatiana Larina?'), made sure there was no doubt as to why the opera was christened Eugene Onegin. Finley was one of only two singers in this performance to go on any kind of journey – the other being Piotr Beczala's committed, heartfelt Lensky – and in Act III he raised the temperature by expressing Onegin's neuroticism and despair with both vocal and physical verve. Perhaps inevitably, his Russian is not as idiomatic as a native speaker's would be (and I'm not sure about his dancing skills, though perhaps the direction was more to blame!), but Finley's transformation from haughty, Mr Darcy-like behaviour at the beginning to a desperate lover pleading on his knees in the closing scene was by far the best reason to see this performance.
I had hoped for great things, too, from Marina Poplavskaya's Tatyana. The former Jette Parker Young Artist seemed the perfect choice for the role: young, beautiful, intelligent, a native Russian, qualities which did indeed enhance her performance. But both her voice and her interpretation surprised me, and not entirely in a positive way. Evidently Poplavskaya sees this character as a great reader, almost a trainee intellectual, a viewpoint emphasised by the production when her friends all bring her presents of books on her nameday. Yet for my taste the singer played the role in far too aloof and reserved a manner. It's fair enough to have her head buried in a book in the first-act quartet, but there was no feeling that her heart had been awoken by this alluring stranger, and I got very little from her facial expression during the Letter monologue. Vocally, too, there was disappointment. Sometimes Poplavskaya produced some beautifully calculated half-tones, but too many of the top notes were not supported strongly enough and even her very final note was unpleasantly harsh; compared to Renée Fleming's lustrous performance of the role on the recent DVD from the Met, Poplavskaya was very tame and uneven.
Ekaterina Semenchuk looked and played the part of Olga perfectly, though her singing was underprojected; neither Robin Leggate (Monsieur Triquet) nor Elizabeth Sikora (Filipyevna) produced the goods vocally, despite strong characterisations, but Brindley Sherett was excellent as Prince Gremin and Young Artist Vuyani Mlinde made a solid impact as Zaretsky. In truth, though, I thought that Diana Montague showed everyone else up: not only did she play the part of Madame Larina with an eye for detail, but she also sang with a firmness of tone and feeling for the style of the music in a way that was unmatched by everyone apart from Finley and Beczala. Jiri Belohlavek's conducting was characterised by evenness and accuracy – a refreshing change from the recent revivals of La traviata and Die Zauberflöte – but marred by slow tempos, a lack of brilliance at the climaxes and a tendency to indulge the singers to the detriment of the momentum of the music; this was particularly the case in a very drawn-out reading of the Letter Scene.
Undoubtedly this performance suffered from the matinee blues, a problem that won't apply to the remaining showings when the vocal standards are likely to be higher. But although it has its moments, Pimlott's production fails to do justice either to Tchaikovsky or to the Pushkin novel on which the opera is based.
Mark Berry, Seen & Heard, 11 March 2008
http://www.musicweb.uk.net/SandH/2008/Jan-Jun08/onegin1003.htm
This was a splendid night in the theatre. The late Steven Pimlott’s production – its revival dedicated to his memory – is set firmly in nineteenth-century Russia, so may be considered ‘traditional’ in that sense, albeit without scenery that is opulent for its own, rather than the drama’s, sake. However, this does not preclude thought-provoking dramatic engagement. Each of the principal characters is allowed to develop rather than being shoehorned into an irrelevant concept. Tatyana’s progress, if progress it be, from country girl to Princess Gremin is splendidly handled, as are Lensky’s descent into mental instability and Onegin’s more complex path. Yet the lack of irrelevant concept does not betoken a lack of concept tout court. Key to the entire production is the reintroduction of Tatyana’s dream, present in Pushkin but excised – at least in explicit terms – from the opera. By portraying this, replete with fantastical animal-guests, on stage, during the entr’acte to the second act, we gain a real sense of the realist/anti-realist dichotomy pervading the opera. How much of the following ballroom scene, into which the dream so unnervingly yet convincingly merges, is ‘real’ and how much Tatyana’s – or even our – projection? Tchaikovsky’s score has of course been doing this all along, with its web of foreshadowing and reminiscence, formed from the dramatic kernel of Tatyana’s Letter Scene. Psychoanalysis beckons, as was made clear in a programme note by the late Malcolm Bowie.
The subtlety of musical reference was well served by Jiří Bělohlávek’s conducting, attentive to the implications of memory without feeling the need to hammer this home. Occasionally I missed a greater sense of urgency and a little neurosis – this is Tchaikovsky – would not have gone amiss, but Bělohlávek’s relative understatement had its own compensations. After a slightly shaky start, the orchestra was excellent, although I could not help but wish that it had been given its head a little more often. Allowing the singers to be clearly heard, as they always could be, is fine in itself, but the orchestral score is no mere accompaniment, especially given its crucial role here in Freudian Traumdeutung. Bělohlávek’s conducting was of course too subtle to sound simply as accompaniment, but ecstasy and anger need to be heard too.
That said, there was a structural sense of everything radiating from the undeniable ecstasy of the Letter Scene, in which the orchestra sounded at its unforced best. Hibla Gerzmava, a couple of short-breathed phrases notwithstanding, shone here as Tatyana. She was superior in every way to her predecessor, Amanda Roocroft, whose flawed vocalism in particular had proved a fly in the ointment during the production’s first run. Gerzmava, by contrast, sounded just ‘right’: secure and focused, yet passionate where required. Much the same could be said of Ekaterina Semenchuk’s fine Olga, who really came into her own during the ballroom scene. If only the character did not disappear so abruptly from the action. Diana Montague and Elizabeth Sikora both impressed as Madame Larina and the old nurse respectively. Hans-Peter König delivered a marvellously secure account– in terms of both music and character – of Gremin’s aria. Choral and dance contributions were all of an appropriately high standard too.
However, despite the lamentations of more than a few critics, this opera is Eugene Onegin, not Tatyana Larina. Another fine aspect of the production was its recognition that, viewed as a whole rather than simply from the perspective of the first act, Onegin is at least as important as Tatyana and becomes more so. As crucial as their relationship, is that between Onegin and Lensky. Tchaikovsky may identify most closely with Tatyana, but his homosexuality pervades the work in another more subtle way, than simply as a projection of his own character and experience onto hers, important though this remains. The romantic friendship, jealousy, and the tragedy of societal convention are a far more complex affair than a dour, literalist reading of the text would suggest. There is, moreover, no contradiction between this and the centrality of Tatyana’s dream-projection, quite the opposite. Both production and score hint rather than render explicit, which seems quite appropriate, given the experience of the nineteenth century. (This is not to say that a more overt approach would not work, but it is not the only way. However, to ignore the issue seems to me at best unimaginative and at worst repressive.) I assume that this was the undertow of the suggestive scenic backdrop at the opening: Hippolyte Flandrin’s study in male beauty, Jeune homme nu assis au bord de la mer, although I do think that the connection might profitably have been made just a little clearer. More importantly, the direction and portrayal of the two principal male roles were excellent. Piotr Beczala was an ardent Lensky, poetic and increasingly insecure and indeed unhinged, yet without caricature or crudity. The timbre of his tenor is undeniably Italianate, but this did not seem to matter.
And then there was Gerald Finley’s Onegin. His was a wonderful portrayal, encompassing gracelessness and gracefulness, withdrawal and sexual charisma, loyalty and betrayal. If Finley lacked the Slavic quality of Dmitri Hvorostovsky, his predecessor at Covent Garden, then Tchaikovsky is too big to be confined to national boundaries. Musically I do not think he could have been faulted, but the identification was such between musical and dramatic means, that the question only presented itself to me in retrospect. Score and performance gave the lie to a claim made in a programme note by Mark Fitzgerald, that that wonderful moment at which Onegin, now realising his complex predicament, reprises Tatyana’s music from the Letter Scene, suggests ‘a shallowness of character and a person unworthy of the attentions of the exalted Tatyana’. Where Fitzgerald discerned shallowness in the altered orchestration, Finley and Bělohlávek quite rightly identified something darker, more urgent, both in timbre and foreshortening. This was a powerful moment indeed, and may be counted as an intensification rather than an unworthy repetition of the original music. Such an understanding, it seems to me, penetrates to the heart of this fine Onegin.
Fiona Maddocks, Evening Standard 11 March 2008
More power to Pushkin
One remarkable performance, that of Gerald Finley in the title role, stood out in this first revival of the late Steven Pimlott's 2006 staging of Eugene Onegin, directed by and handsomely if strenuously designed in bright rustic Russo-Napoleonic style by Antony McDonald.
Tchaikovsky's music penetrates to the heart of Pushkin's poem, forcing aside its artifice of cool irony. Finley, ever more wild and impassioned, heaped risk on vocal risk to deepen the character of the flawed hero. It helps, too, that this Canadian baritone, now in his prime, has legs born for knee-breeches, obligingly provided by the 1820s costumes.
Russian soprano Hibla Gerzmava offered vocal insights as impetuous young Tatyana (alternating with Marina Poplavskaya) but remained too impassive. Her big moment is the Letter Scene, that huge monologue in which she pours her heart and inkwell out to the unyielding Onegin and lives to regret it. If there's any message here, it's don't press "Send".
Piotr Beczala's Lensky had ringing top notes but wooden presence and Ekaterina Semenchuk's Olga, though securely sung, sacrificed charm to a desperate dose of over-acting. Chorus and cameos gave strong support.
For his ROH debut, Jiri Bĕlohlávek conducted with sensitivity and tenderness, his love of the music evident in every note, expressively played by the ROH orchestra. He must be a dream to sing for. The tentative moments should soon disappear to reveal the perfection of this magically woven masterpiece.
Dave Paxton, MusicOMH.com, 12 March 2008
http://www.musicomh.com/opera/roh-eugene_0308.htm
If one had watched only the final scene of this production of Eugene Onegin, the impression would have been of a thrilling evening of theatre.
Actually, it was a problematic one, redeemed only by various strong vocal performances and the presence of an intelligent conductor in the pit.
The late Steven Pimlott's production fails to illuminate Tchaikovsky's masterful score.
Eugene Onegin is an intimate work, a realistic one, its genius in the subtlety of the orchestral writing and the believability of the human drama. Taste in German and Italian opera of the period may have been for the grand, but Tchaikovsky wanted something smaller, more personable. Here, director Pimlott makes full use of the Covent Garden stage, huge, erotic images blazened on the drop curtain, a lake of water centre stage and the whole enclosed by the monumental contours of an implied picture frame. Unsurprisingly, the character interaction is completely dwarfed.
The set is so large that, in the opera's most intimate scenes, ‘mini sets' are literally dragged onstage, yet any semblance of intimacy is lost when characters step from them, destroying the illusion conjured. Where this production ultimately fails is in its theatricality, damaging in a work so necessarily realistic. One problem is the (admittedly effective) lighting, which changes hue not only to evoke the time of day, but also to reflect the characters' inner feelings, the appearance more of Expressionism than of realism.
It does not help that scene changes often involve enough banging and hammering to interfere with the action, still occuring before the drop curtain; equally problematic is the direction of the chorus, rudimentary poses and gestures dramatically unconvincing. There is still much to enjoy, albeit fleetingly: in the work's final scene, Onegin and Tatyana sit at opposite sides of the stage as they contemplate their lost love, a moment arresting in its simpleness of intention and effectiveness of delivery. Sadly, as a whole, Pimlott's production is too overbearing for the opera's intimate human drama to appear either realistic or convincing.
On Monday evening, Jirí Belohlávek's conducting improved greatly as it progressed, this interpretation subtle and reflective, stunningly powerful as the score breaks into forte grandeur; early stretches of uninspired pacing were easily forgettable. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House responded with nuanced, responsive phrasing and articulation. The chorus too had a weak start, straying often from Belohlávek's clear rhythms in the first act, but their singing later on could be exquisitely poised and gut-wrenchingly forceful. Forceful too was the Tatyana, Hibla Gerzmava, her vocal performance in the opera's final scene mesmerising. Gerzmava boasts a firmer voice and finer acting than Marina Poplavskaya, who I watched on Saturday's matinee performance, but even her characterisation could seem slightly tepid on Monday, while some heavy breathing provided aural distraction.
I found Piotr Beczala's Lensky to be dramatically underwhelming, and the artist's voice, for all the style of delivery, lacks both finesse and ease. It was Gerald Finley's Onegin that ultimately raised the temperature of this revival, the artist's stage presence magnificent and his voice thrilling: open-throated and expressive. This Onegin was an especially, brilliantly black, ambiguous hole at the centre of the drama. Forget any qualms: this is essential viewing for Finley alone.
Richard Morrison, Times, 12 March 2008
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article3530760.ece
When the late Steven Pimlott's production of Tchaikovsky's Pushkin opera was first presented by the Royal Opera, large stretches of it bored me as much as a life in the country bores Mr Onegin. From the drippy, homoerotic front-tab paintings to the inert crowd scenes, it seemed far too fey and limpid.
But what a difference a change of Eugene makes. To go from handsome but wooden Dmitri Hvorostovsky to mad, bad and dangerous-to-know Gerald Finley is to swap a paddle round a millpond for a white-water rafting trip. This Onegin seduces a more than willing Olga with a wicked glint in Act II, then crashes through shocked aristocrats in Act III, swigging what's probably not lemonade from a hip flask. True, Finley doesn't command such velvety tone. But his explosion of nihilistic despair after Tatyana's rejection of him is thrilling music-theatre.
And his Tatyana, the young Russian soprano Hibla Gerzmava, reserves her most impassioned singing and acting for that scene, too. She has a potentially fabulous voice: clear and focused, yet also full of colour and with a reservoir of power that enables her to ride the biggest fortes like a surfer on a wave. But earlier, particularly in the letter scene, she doesn't work hard enough to project the turmoil of doubt, exhilaration and trepidation experienced by an adolescent girl pouring out her heart for the first time. It's reflective rather than impulsive.
Nor is she helped by Jirí Belohlávek's often stiff and sedate conducting. The emotional temperature in the pit rises a bit as the evening progresses, but Belohlávek needs to put a lot more snap, crackle and pop into his allegros if he's going to project the level of barely suppressed hysteria that Tchaikovsky surely expected.
Elsewhere, there's an appealingly acted and delicately sung Olga from Ekaterina Semenchuk, a superbly sonorous Prince Gremin from the German man-mountain Hans-Peter König, a slightly underpowered and vocally pinched Lensky from Piotr Beczala, and two seasoned British mezzos - Diana Montague and Elizabeth Sikora - to put over the roles of mother and nurse with style and musicality.
The staging of the great ball scene, and Lensky's unwise call for pistols at dawn, seems much more highly charged than it did two years ago. On the other hand, turning half the stage into an ice rink - for three minutes of skating - seems just as unnecessary.
Martin Kettle, the Guardian,12 March 2008
http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/operalivereviews/story/0,,2264292,00.html
Mess with Eugene Onegin at your peril. Several characters in Pushkin's verse novel and Tchaikovsky's opera learn this the hard way. But the warning applies to directors, too. The relationship between Tchaikovsky's assured "lyric scenes" and Pushkin's dazzling irony is a delicate one. Unfortunately, the late Steven Pimlott's production, here revived by Elaine Kidd for the first time since the director's tragic death last year, blunders gratuitously into the elaborate dialectic between author and composer. The result is a theatrical jumble.
Again and again, Pimlott allowed an intrusive finger, and sometimes an elbow, to put pressure on the opera's finely constructed balances. The result is never happy. Tchaikovsky aimed at a romantic naturalism somewhat at odds with Pushkin's take of emotional self-deception. But Pimlott thought he knew better than the composer. From the start, the characters come down to the front of the stage and sing in the grand opera manner that Tchaikovsky sought to avoid.
But that is one of Pimlott's minor offences. His most serious misjudgment lay in interpolating a surrealistic dream scene from Pushkin that Tchaikovsky never used - bears, frogs, skeletons and other grotesques shimmy across the stage like a scene by Fuseli. The effect is to destroy the tragicomic realism of the row between Onegin and Lensky at the country ball to celebrate Tatyana's birthday, on which the story turns. The production is off-balance from then on.
That said, musically, this is a very distinguished revival. Best of all is the fluent and idiomatic conducting of Jirˇí Beˇlohlávek, who moves the score along delicately while never overlooking its darker and more declamatory side. The Russian soprano Hibla Gerzmava - who shares the role in this production with Marina Poplavskaya - makes a vocally compelling Tatyana. Her letter scene, the heart and soul of the opera, has an authenticity that only a Slav voice can bring to it. But Gerzmava is a wooden actor, not helped by Antony McDonald's unflattering costumes, and, in a production that purports to see the drama through Tatyana's eyes, this lack of credibility is a failing.
Occasionally straining, Gerald Finley nevertheless gives a classic Onegin, suavely assured but hopelessly mistaken about almost everything - Covent Garden owes this fine artist a better production than this. Piotr Beczala is a good Lensky and Diana Montague an exemplary Larina. Ekaterina Semenchuk has a remarkable voice, but overdoes it as Olga. Hans-Peter König struggles with Gremin's famous aria, though his role in this misconceived production is reduced to even less than usual.
Rupert Christiansen, the Telegraph, 12 March 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/03/12/btonegin112.xml
Electrifying emotions
This revival of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin offered the rarest and sweetest of operatic pleasures: a performance rich in truly first-rate singing.
Hibla Gerzmava, a Russian soprano new to me, made a glorious Covent Garden debut as Tatyana, warmly expressive in the Letter Scene and full-voiced and tonally steady throughout.
In the title role, Gerald Finley was, as ever, exemplary, his musicianship, artistry and technique beyond carping. Their final encounter, in which buried emotions explode destructively, was electrifying.
The secondary roles were taken with no less distinction. Piotr Beczala sang Lensky with virile confidence and ardour, nicely matched against the ebullient Olga of Ekaterina Semenchuk.
A mighty German bass, Hans-Peter König, made me sit up and listen to Gremin's aria, which usually bores me.
Diana Montague was an elegant Larina, Elizabeth Sikora a vivacious Filipyevna and Robin Leggate spot-on as Monsieur Triquet. The chorus sounded magnificent.
All praise to the conductor Jirí Belohlávek, whose conducting combined authoritative pacing with refinement of orchestral detail. Under a lesser baton, this score can sound thin and sentimental, but here its romantic splendour and tragic gravity blossomed.
The only bad news is that Steven Pimlott's production, revived a year after his sadly premature death by Elaine Kidd, looks even more leadenly lavish, dramatically inept and perversely ugly than it did when it was unveiled in 2006. But don't let anything put you off buying a ticket for this otherwise superb performance.
Alexander Campbell, Classicalsource.com, 12 March 2008
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_concert_review.php?id=5618
Sometimes it takes a revival of a production to bring out qualities that were either overlooked or lay dormant in the earlier performances. Such is it here in Elaine Kidd’s taut and confident revival of the late Steven Pimlott’s 2006 production of “Eugene Onegin” for The Royal Opera. At its first outing it received a mixed reception, many feeling that the opera was swamped by the dominating arty gauzes and rather garish and “Broadway musical” costume designs. Now those aspects interfere less and there is an enticing account of the orchestral score under the assured baton of Jiří Bělohlávek, who increasingly is demonstrating he is an operatic conductor to be reckoned with.
The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House seems to be on a bit of a roll at the moment – here there were wonderful moments of tension or foreboding or bloom and warmth in all those passages where the strings quiver to underline the emotional core of the scenes and sensibilities of the protagonists. Add to that the delicate and decorative woodwind figures that are among this score’s distinctive qualities and you have a reading that provides much to savour. Mention should be made of the harp; its contributions rarely make the impact they did here. Bělohlávek is not one to over-romanticise and that is all to the good, and he is very considerate of the singers. If he and the chorus of peasants took a little while to meet the same tempo, this was a small blip.
The conductor is blessed with a very well balanced cast of principals. Predictably, Gerald Finley delivers a warmly sung Onegin, and his upper register has a ring to it that makes the character’s desperate curtain-closers very exciting. His Onegin is very much the anti-hero, and perhaps he overdoes the rather pompous, priggish aspects – to the extent that one wonders why Tatyana finds him anything more than rather just good looking. Later on he captures the disillusionment of the more mature man re-surfacing in St Petersburg rather more effectively, but one needs to have some underlying sympathy for the man and his folly early on to care about what happens later.
Tatyana is another difficult role, and at this performance it was sung by the Russian soprano Hibla Gerzmava, making her debut in the house. (Marina Poplavskaya also takes the role.) Gerzmava has a very distinctive sound that may not appeal to all, though it has a plaintive quality that suits the character well, both as the young idealistic girl and also for the emotionally-controlled young woman of the final acts. Her ‘Letter Scene’ was extremely well sung and performed – with frenetic, impetuous movement at the start, and then a moment where she sat on the front of the stage, singing quietly and simply and keeping the audience absolutely rapt. Also strong was the way she visibly started to turn into her mature self towards the end of Onegin’s lecture to her. She perhaps lacked the poise of some interpreters, but this was an assured and developing portrayal.
There was a strong contrast between this Tatyana and her flighty sister Olga, sung by Ekaterina Semenchuk. Difficult to bring this girl’s persona to life, but Semenchuk has the requisite low notes and the ability to voice them lightly. She’s an assured actress and made Olga one of the major players, rather than just Tatyana’s sister.
Lensky was the Polish tenor Piotr Beczala, and he too gave a convincing and well-sung account. Perhaps a little more honey at the start of the quartet in the scene in the garden would have lifted it to greater heights, but he managed a good sense of introspection in his aria before the duel. He was best in the scene at the Larina’s ball where his strong voice brought Lensky’s hot-headedness to life.
Hans-Peter König made another welcome appearance at The Royal Opera as Prince Gremin, sung with finesse in his rounded, rich bass. Putting the St Petersburg ball-scene outside by the banks of a frozen River Neva, complete with ice-skaters, seems to militate against the music here and it seems odd that Gremin and Onegin are the only ones unaffected by the cold and not wearing winter wear!
There are also some lovely and detailed cameos from the ever-charismatic Diana Montague as a wise, wistful and humorous Madame Larina, from Elizabeth Sikora as Tatyana’s slightly dotty nurse, and also from Robin Leggate’s Monsieur Triquet – if you can overcome that particular costume and wig and retain dignity then you are a true professional!
It is the care for the important minor details, the balance of the cast, and the excellence of the conducting and playing, that makes this a strong revival. If a few tics of the production still irritate (do the ghosts of characters from the duel need to reappear in the ice-rink scene?), it looks as if it may be further encompassing of new casts and different interpretations.
Andrew Clark, Financial Times, 14 March 2008
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/99c7cdc0-f168-11dc-a91a-0000779fd2ac.html
The libretto for Tchaikovsky's "lyric scenes" consists of large and small extracts from 56 stanzas of Pushkin's verse-novel, with a few additions by the composer and more than a few changes of emphasis. A lot was left out, particularly the imagery of Tatiana's dreams, and it's this that the late Steven Pimlott tried to restore in his highly original 2006 staging for the Royal Opera. The images chosen by him and his designer, Antony McDonald, hint at a young woman's inner world - everything from flamboyant costumes and radiant colours to friendly animals and romantic encounters, all specified by Pushkin - in a way intended also to reflect and illuminate the musical cross-references of Tchaikovsky's score.
So much of Pimlott's concept has been drained from this first revival, directed by Elaine Kidd, that the point and heart of his always fragile vision has been lost. What we're left with is a standard Onegin with a few unexplained quirks. The cross-referencing might as well never have been there. It's a disappointing memorial to a fine director.
The change in pallor brings another equally crucial penalty: none of the principals brings the sort of dramatic conviction that, in its original incarnation, justified the boldness of Pimlott's approach. The one consolation is that, in purely musical terms, Tchaikovsky is well served.
The temperature of Jiri Belohlávek's conducting may be low (and the chorus sounds flaccid), but at least he draws nuanced playing from the orchestra. Gerald Finley establishes himself as the Onegin of choice with a performance of poise and vocal grace, as well as stage personality. Neither Marina Poplavskaya nor Piotr Beczala touches the heart - a different director might have extracted more intensity - but Poplavskaya's Letter Scene is immaculately schooled and paced (she and her Russian compatriot Hibla Gerzmava alternate as Tatiana during the run). As for Beczala's Act Two aria, it's baffling how a Lensky of such sweet timbre and elegant vocal address should fail to stir the audience. Robin Leggate contributes an unhackneyed Triquet - here's another underrated tenor - and Brindley Sherratt's Gremin is dignity personified. For all their finesse, this revival shows the level of polished routine to which a hard-working, consumer-obsessed opera factory is prone to descend.
David Gutman, The Stage, 13 March 2008
http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/20126/eugene-onegin
This production by the late Steven Pimlott is dominated by its design concepts which, for once, work best from the cheaper seats. There are almost too many visual coups. First up is a dropcloth depicting a familiar image of a naked youth in melancholy pose, though any homoerotic intent is jettisoned during the opera itself, which emphasises rather the presence of water in all its forms. A stream is set (for some invisibly) into the floor of the stage. The heroine wades into it after she has dispatched her fateful letter. Later, it becomes an ice rink - St Petersburg’s frozen Neva. Peter Mumford’s lighting makes great play with watery effects.
Meanwhile scenery and costumes border on the hallucinogenic, eschewing the down-to-earth realism once considered de rigueur. The action is set in a series of framed, noisily moveable boxes, although the singers tend to step forward to address the audience direct in their big numbers.
The main roles are cast from strength. Gerald Finley doesn’t do caddish, his Onegin inescapably noble of bearing as well as focused of voice. When he tells Tatyana he can love her only as a brother, it seems to reveal his own lack of self-awareness, deliberate put-down no longer.
Piotr Beczala’s Lensky is a more conventional portrayal. Making her house debut as Tatyana, Hibla Gerzmava brings more recognisably Slavic timbre. She is genuinely fresh and affecting as the timid young provincial with girlish dreams and a little adolescent puppy fat.
Other stand-outs include Hans-Peter Konig’s resonant Prince Gremin and Elizabeth Sikora’s characterful Nurse. Jiri Belohlavek, another Royal Opera first-timer, conducts with unsensational skill.
Anthony Holden, The Observer,
Sunday March 16, 2008
http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/reviews/story/0,,2265720,00.html
…Back on Earth, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin has returned to Covent Garden with Canadian baritone Gerald Finley taking thrilling risks in the title role. The authentic Russian is soprano Hibla Gerzmava, alternating the role of Tatyana with her compatriot Marina Poplavskaya; though less of an actress, Gerzmaya sings the rejected lover with affecting passion and crystal-clear precision. Tenor Piotr Beczala makes a ringing if wooden Lensky and the supporting cast is well led by Diana Montague's stately Madame Larina and Ekaterina Semenchuk's feisty Olga.
But all have to fight against the perverse staging of the late Steven Pimlott, revived by Elaine Kidd, with its pointless pond cramping the stage for setpieces such as the duel and the Grand Polonaise. The pictorial front-cloths remain as irritating as they are irrelevant, literally coming between the audience and the action, and Olga's name-day ball is the wrong moment for a bestiary of grotesques to milk laughs from the corporate crowd. Jiri Belohlavek conducts with such tender, loving care, and Finley sings with such brave assurance, that a concert performance of this wonderful work would be preferable to all this fussy fiddling with a masterpiece that needs none.
Jonathan Lennie, Time Out, 20 March 2008
http://www.timeout.com/london/classical/events/686138/eugene_onegin.html
Rating: Five out of six stars
It is hard to fault this revival of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ – at least, visually. The late Steven Pimlott’s production is truly beautiful – Anthony McDonald’s designs, viewed through a gauze front-drop, create stunning Vaseline lens-like images of the Russian landscape, from luminescent summer sunsets to stark winter scenes.
The singing is good, too. The young soprano Marina Poplavskaya, we are told by ROH publicity, ‘can do 0-60 decibels in one second, with complete control’. And it would appear to be true. Fortunately, she didn’t need to step into overdrive because the conductor Jirí Belohlávek kept his orchestra under control, allowing hers and the other wonderful voices here to shine. Of these, the bass of Hans-Peter König stays long in the memory in his heartfelt depiction of Prince Gremin.
In the comical scenes there is some fine acting, particularly from baritone Gerald Finley, as Onegin, who is clearly capable of wooing the ladies and raising hell with just his eyebrows. The excellent tenor Piotr Beczala hams it up beautifully as Onegin’s piqued and jealous friend Lensky, who is outraged by Finley’s eyebrow work with his fiancée, Olga. However, it is hard to believe that he becomes angry enough to raise the stakes and challenge his former buddy to a duel.
And this is the problem with the piece, for amid all this winsome charm and beauty there are lacking the visceral emotions that underpin Pushkin’s verse novel of awakening passion, thwarted love, missed opportunity and regret. Come the end,
I cared nothing for the arrogant Onegin or his demure Tatyana and, subsequently, the denouement seemed to come from nowhere both dramatically and emotionally.
Tony Kiely, Camden New Journal, 20 March 2008
http://www.thecnj.com/review/2008/032008/classmusic032008_01.html
Those that can, do, those that can’t, criticise
In the year or so that I’ve been living and going to performances in London, I’ve noticed something about English audiences: their complete unwillingness to give a standing ovation, regardless of the quality of entertainment they’ve just been lucky enough to witness.
From the Coliseum to Covent Garden, from the Roundhouse to the Hammersmith Apollo, audiences remain stuck to their seats – clapping, in fairness, but resolute in their refusal to give that most traditional form of thank you to the artist.
On the opening night of Eugene Onegin, again, the only people standing up were the journalists leaving their seats, scurrying to an early exit and back to a cluttered desk where they cranked out their few hundreds words of “criticism”.
Much of what has been said about this production in the pages of the nationals has been, on balance, negative. “A theatrical blunder,” said one. “Cumbersome and vapid,” said another.
The general theme that unites all the major reviews is that this is an inauthentic version of Tchaikovsky’s lyric opera, based on Pushkin’s novel in verse; oh, and the set was too distracting, the actors wooden, the costumes garish, the orchestral colours “diluted and indistinct”.
If you want aural perfection and visual authenticity, stick Semyon Bychkov’s version on a pair of headphones and head for Russia.
Listen to Acts I and II while meditating before a vista of wheatfields, and then jump a train to St Petersburg for the final act. What all of these critics seem to have missed is that, while there may have been flaws in this production, the overall effect was spellbinding.
The whole point of going to see a live performance is to see something different, something that electrifies because you never quite know what’s coming next.
If opera producers slavishly stuck to the established and this goes for everyone involved in the arts – then they would routine – stagnate and the medium would die. Art survives because of people that are willing to take chances, to make changes and explore new avenues. Who cares if Tchaikovsky didn’t use Pushkin’s weird dream sequence and Steven Pimlott’s version does? It may not have worked particularly well as an idea, but do we really want to go along to theatres, opera houses and art galleries to see the same thing over and over again?
To desire such conformity of art seems cowardly.
Musically, the production was strong from start to finish; the final scene with Gerald Finley (Onegin) and Hibla Gerzmava (Tatyana) was breath-taking, while Hans-Peter Konig gave a rousing performance in the sadly diminished role of Prince Gremin.
But to heap praise amidst such a quagmire of journalistic buffoonery and willful naysaying is difficult.
On that note, it seems wildly ironic – having watched an opera in which the protagonist’s downfall comes from an inflated sense of self-importance that blinds him to the “bigger picture” – that so many critics can arrogantly think themselves to be so far elevated above the artists whose fate, all to often, is in their hands.
To leave a three-hour production wishing that there had been a fourth is, in my book, a rare thing.
And to hell with any hack, paid to find fault, who can pick the smallest of details and portray a triumph as a travesty.
Michael Tanner, the Spectator, 18 March 2008
http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/arts/563951/ready-for-retirement.thtml
Ready for retirement
When the late Steven Pimlott’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was first staged at the Royal Opera two years ago, it had a frosty critical reception, largely because too much of it seemed either routine or irrelevant. Why, for instance, do we get Flandrin’s famous painting of a nude lad in profile as a front-drop for the first part of the work? Try as anyone might, it would be hard work to find any gay subtext in this opera. The composer clearly identified with Tatyana, and as always wrote his best love music when the object of passion is a man, but what has that to do with the blow-up? And why is the great Polonaise, which sets the scene for Onegin’s reintroduction to Tatyana after years of bored wandering, set as a funeral procession, with, as two years ago under a different conductor, a drastically underplayed account of that wonderful music? Why is there an elaborate scene change for a few seconds of skating on the river, striking as that looks? One suspects that the only answer is that Pimlott, and the revival director Elaine Kidd, can find nothing new to say about the characters so can only resort to messing around with the staging.
Not, I think, that there is anything new to say about these characters, but nor does there need to be. All we need is the maximum amount of animation on the part of the singers and their conductor, and the opera will be as moving as it can be, one of the great original works in the genre. Jiri Belohlavek is an exasperating conductor, who can work for long stretches on auto-pilot. Worse than that, in a score which needs careful tending if it isn’t to seem merely episodic, he lets tension sag, as he did even in the Letter scene, which was only affecting in certain stretches thanks to the inwardness of Hibla Gerzmava’s Tatyana. When she wondered whether Onegin was an angel or a demon sent to tempt her, it was with a rapt tone more lovely than any I have heard in that marvellous section. But when she sang out, in all except the final scene her tone became harsh and squally, and suggested a woman of a certain age making her last bid rather than a young girl thrilled and frightened by what she is feeling. And the wardrobe department did her no favours, it was hard to tell the difference between her and the Nurse, and Gerzmava’s acting does nothing to help: she still performs in the old</