Eugene Onegin
Royal Opera House, London
★★
Michael Church
Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is the opera everyone loves. Ted Huffman’s new production comes heralded with this American director’s warning that it will spring surprises for those in the audience who cleave to the familiar operatic take on the story by Pushkin from which Tchaikovsky drew his libretto.
Huffman promises to incorporate ‘more of Pushkin’s voice, which is more sardonic, more whimsical, than Tchaikovsky’s music. I regard Tchaikovsky as my collaborator in this,’ he’s said in an interview.
Liparit Avetisyan (Lensky) and Avery Amereau (Olga) ©Tristram Kenton
Coming from a director whose job should be to serve the music, these are peculiar words. Indeed, doubly peculiar because the doom-laden romanticism of this opera’s music – which Huffman wants to counteract – is the work’s essence, pervading every scene. This man has clearly failed to register the music’s sophisticated psychology, and its sardonic social commentary.
The work is cast in a series of scenes. Virginal Tatyana and middle-aged rake Onegin fall in love at a party, during which Onegin insults his best friend the poet Lensky; they fight a duel, Lensky is killed, and Onegin deserts Tatyana. Years pass, they meet again, he still loves her, but although she reciprocates that love, marital duty prevents her eloping with him.
It’s all dashed hopes and broken hearts, but Huffman can’t resist the temptation to tamper with the plot. I won’t reveal his cheekiest change: suffice to say that it pointlessly muddies the water. And it’s far from being the evening’s only misjudgement.
Was it poverty or perversity that induced Huffman to decree that there should be no stage design of any kind, apart from two chairs, a table, and a chandelier? His stage is an empty black box, and his drama exists in no identifiable time or place; his huge chorus seems to have been thrown together at random, with no community spirit. And his basic stage-craft is at times glaringly amateur.
Kristiana Mkhitaryan (Tatyana) and Gordon Bintner (Eugene Onegin) ©Tristram Kenton
The opera’s most poignant scene should come when, alone in her bedroom, the youthful Tatyana pours out her heart by writing a love letter to Onegin. Why on earth does Huffman sabotage it by having Tatyana’s sister take it all down in dictation, as if she was Tatyana’s secretary?
On the plus side, however, is some very fine singing, most notably that of the Armenian tenor Liparit Avetisyan’s Lensky whose passionate warmth twice stopped the show on first night. And when conductor Henrik Nanasi’s overbearing orchestra doesn’t drown out Kristina Mkhitaryan’s Tatyana, the Russian soprano’s singing has moving grace. Gordon Bintner’s Onegin is a dry and charmless presence, but Brindley Sherratt’s aria as Tatyana’s husband Prince Gremin is a reminder of the potential beauty of basso profundo.
In short, a severely austerity staging, with music saving the day.
Until 14 October