Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Friday 5th March 2021
When I saw
Eugene Onegin announced for the Festival, my initial response was, 'Great, a chance to hear it sung by Russian singers'. It was not the opera that Tchaikovsky based on the poem by Pushkin, but a production from the Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre, directed by Rimas Tuminas.
My first thought was how carefully Tchaikovsky chose the parts of the poem that would work best as a libretto. My second thought was astonishment at what he left out. My third thought was deep admiration for what Tuminas and his company achieved with the superb realisation of his vision.
The performance was live-streamed from Moscow, performed mid-morning and therefore a Festival special for them as for us. It was no different than it was for Adelaide audiences watching the sold-out A Midsummer Nights Dream by relay to Elder Park. While the letter scene which triggers so much of the emotional tragedy in the opera and the play was there, it was the passage about Tatiana's nightmare, in which she was chased by a bear, that would resonate through the production.
Briefly, the title character is what the Russians referred to as ' superfluous', independently wealthy, well-educated, and bored. He politely turns down a love letter from a teenage girl, Tatiana, explaining that they come from different worlds. He provokes a duel with Lensky, his best friend, by flirting with Olga, Tatiana's sister and Lensky's betrothed. Lensky dies. The appearance of the older Lensky in the play is just one of the intriguing details created by the director.
The world-weary older Onegin is played by the much-lauded
Sergey Makovetsky, the young Onegin by Victor Dobronravov. Older and younger Lensky, by Oleg Makarov and Vasily Simonov. Tatiana is a splendid performance by
Olga Lerman, passionate, articulate, and growing in emotional strength throughout.
Much of the narrative weight is carried by Artur Ivanov, a hard-drinking retired Hussar, but it is also carried by other members of the cast. Tuminas introduced a corps de ballet of beautiful women in white, directed by a black-clad martinet of a ballet mistress with a stick, Lyudmilla Maksarova, who also appears as the nanny. She may not be a classic character outside Russia, but I was drilled by Zora Zemberova, so I have a little direct experience. The ballet mistress later turns up and dies. There's
Maria Volkova, as Olga, forgetting the poet who dies for her and married to a soldier. Ekaterina Kramzina keeps appearing, as a wandering musician, accompanying performers with her domra. There's a bunny. There's snow. There's a scene of such imagination that it will stick in my mind forever. Tatiana is in Moscow, at what is effectively a marriage market. She has found a quiet corner and a jar of jam. She spoons the jam greedily into her face. An older man, in formal dress sits beside her. She offers him the jam and his own spoon. Prince Gremin eats fastidiously, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. It's the most wonderful 'jokey' courtship. She will marry him.
It is as the Princess Gremina that Onegin will meet her again. He cannot believe that she is the same woman he met years before and in the crucial scene of the play and the opera, he declares his love for her, and she admits she still loves him, but she is a married woman and will be faithful to her husband. Then we see Onegin slumped at table with an empty glass, like a tired travelling salesman on the way home. Tatiana races off stage and returns dancing with a bear. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.
The faces are wonderful, the Slavic cheekbones of the women, the lined cheeks of the men. The choreography, the costumes are of the calibre you'd expect. The company had been on the Festival shopping list for some years, and maybe one day a chance to see them live will occur. They do a striking Anna Karenina, I've read.
The poem was written using a complex rhyming formula and the subtitles, though at times a little eccentric apparently, followed it in English. I'm a proofreader from way back, and I did notice a few things.
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