Metropolitan Opera Archives

Ethel Fox designed the women's costumes and perhaps others as well.
Eugene Onegin received five performances this season.
Tchaikovsky's opera had been presented in concert form at New York's Carnegie Hall on February 1, 1908, in English translation.

Review 1:

Review of James Gibbons Huneker in The New York World

Joseph Urban has devised at least two charming stage pictures and his costumes are of the period and picturesque. His snow scene has verisimilitude and might be an Ernest Lawson on a magnified scale, or from the brush of Boertsen, the Belgian paysagiste, who depicts with a fat, flowing pigment ice-locked and snowbound canals in Holland and in his native land. The bedroom is dainty, but that bed was surely never intended for the robust Claudia Muzio; rather it is suited for the tiny twinkletoes of the only Galli, called Rosina. However, it is the bleak snow picture that most appeals. The first scene is peacefully rustic and atmospheric. The snow opportunely falls after the fatal pistol shots. Martinelli-Lensky rolls over so convincingly that Frank Warren suggested ringing up Columbus 3200.

?Miss Muzio has sung no better this season her allotted airs. They are so Italian that they suited her fervid lyrical style. She looked too massive, too well-fed for a love-lorn lass, and she was very much en negligee till the last scene, where she wore a flamboyant Empire gown too high-shouldered to be becoming. However, Mr. De Luca didn't convince as the hero. He was too mature and set, and his accustomed plasticity of action created little illusion. He sang as usual-that is, like the artist he is. Martinelli too made the most of Lensky, not an attractive character. A paper-mache figure. Miss Howard was a sympathetic nurse. Miss Ingram was not happily cast-Olga is a rather bad role-while Mr. Didur, the only Russian in the cast, was as Italian as his colleagues; but, then his part is almost negligible. You can't feel interested in a man whose wife is faithful to him. On general principles there is something wrong with him, anyhow in operatic fiction. Mr. Bada presents a most gratifying portrait of Triquet to be frank, he walked away with the ballroom episode. Mr. Bodanzky did not linger over the syrupy music, for which Apollo be praised! The score is of a linked sweetness, long drawn out, but the conductor's vivacious baton and spirited tempi made the music seem better than it is. There were many Russians present, Jascha Heifetz the most distinguished. Much enthusiasm was manifested after the dancing of the two blond kids in the first scene, and after her letter aria Muzio was recalled and bouquets abounded. It was all so delightfully transparent and old-fashioned. Henry James would have described the evening as "abysmally entertaining."

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