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[Met Performance] CID:327650

New Production

Eugene Onegin
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, March 13, 1997

Debut : Antonio Pappano, Marianna Tarassova, Irina Arkhipova, Robert Carsen, Serge Bennathan, Michael Levine, Jean Kalman







Eugene Onegin received nine performances this season.

FUNDING:
Production gift of the Lila Acheson and DeWitt Wallace Fund for Lincoln Center

Review 1:

Review of Peter G. Davis in New York Magazine

Exercise in Austerity

The Met's production of 'Eugene Onegin' takes risks that play surprisingly well. If only the singers' performances lived up to Robert Carson's inventive direction. Intermission disputes were heated at the Metropolitan Opera's new "Eugene Onegin" production, with the boos and bravos just about evenly divided at the end-an inevitable, and refreshing flurry of controversy as the Met continues to reconsider its conservative image and gingerly experiments with a diversity of production styles. Even those familiar with the work of Canadian-born director Robert Carsen, a ubiquitous presence on the European opera scene only now making his Met debut, could hardly guess how he would treat "Onegin." One reads about a Carsenized "Otello" in Cologne featuring the Moor as a white man, Puccini's "Girl of the Golden West" in Ghent made to look like a silent-movie starring Joan Crawford, and Britten's "Midsummer Night's Dream" in London staged on a gigantic queen-size bed with green sheets. "I do wish Carsen would start directing operas instead of merely decorating their peripheries," one exasperated British critic recently grumbled.

Working with two favorite teammates (set and costume designer Michael Levine and lighting designer Jean Kalman), Carsen could scarcely be accused of excessive exterior decoration in this austere presentation of Tchaikovsky's "lyric scenes," as the composer preferred to call his adaptation of Pushkin's famous poem. In fact, there's not much around the edges to inspect at all, and many probably felt cheated at not seeing so much as a chandelier at the fancy ball at the Gremin Palace in St. Petersburg, or even a shrub in the garden at Madame Larina's country estate. The whole opera, according to the Carsen-Levine vision of it. takes place within the confines of three bare walls - a large box containing little more than the costumed characters and a few pieces of furniture, all strictly in period style.

Quite a lot happens onstage of course, and those sensitive to music as it relates to action and character in opera probably had even stronger objections than Met regulars who like to applaud scenery. Carsen's most controversial stroke was to join Acts Two and Three without a pause, beginning the festive polonaise even as Onegin stares down at the corpse of his friend Lensky, whom he has just shot in a duel. Then, instead of elegant couples dancing at Prince Gremin's, we watch an impassive Onegin being groomed by valets and setting off on his purposeless life as a bored social lion until fate brings him to the ball, where he remeets and falls hopelessly in love with the now-married Tatiana. With this invention, some insist, Carsen arrogantly hurls himself between us and the opera Tchaikovsky wrote. Perhaps, but I found the device a dramatically effective gloss that tells us something relevant about Onegin while accurately mirroring the feverishly hectic dance music, even if the composer did have something more conventional in mind at this point.

The production's daredevil sense of economy worked even more impressively earlier, in Tatiana's bedroom as the girl writes her secret love letter to Onegin - the opera's key lyrical scene and the incident in Pushkin that originally fired Tchaikovsky's imagination. Here the all-purpose "box" becomes a cloudless night sky with a fingernail moon looking down on a solitary brass bed, night table, and candlelit writing desk, all surrounded by a carpet of autumn leaves through which Tatiana dreamily wanders as she becomes increasingly gripped by her adolescent passion. It's a breathtakingly romantic scene, gorgeously lit by Kalman, and a gift to a soprano who could seize the moment, project Tatiana's heartache, and sing this piercingly beautiful music with radiance.

That is precisely what Galina Gorchakova cannot do, and her colleagues aren't much better. If the Met's new Onegin fails to convince, the fault lies more with weak singing and musical direction than with outrageous directorial offenses. I admit that the cast is disadvantaged by the set to the extent that it tends to draw voices up into the flies rather than direct them straight out into the auditorium. Still, that could not entirely explain or excuse Gorchakova's cloudy tone, inexpressive phrasing, and frumpish acting. Vladimir Chernov makes many beautiful vocal points as Onegin, but his elegant baritone has always sounded undersized in this house, no matter what the production. As Lensky, the Met's prodigal-son tenor, Neil Shicoff, returns after seven years' enforced absence in Europe, his voice a trifle thicker but his art no deeper than when he left. Vladimir Ognovenko clothes Gremin's lovely aria in a small, raspy bass with a nonexistent low register.

There are telling cameos by Michel Sénéchal as the fussy French tutor Triquet; Marianna Tarassova as a flighty Olga; and, as Tatiana's motherly nurse, Irina Arkhipova, the Bolshoi's great leading mezzo-soprano of yesteryear, now over 70 and making a belated Met debut. Antonio Pappano has conducted several fine opera recordings lately, but his Met bow was a sore disappointment. Not only did he fail to find much color or lyricism in the score, but he also never succeeded in establishing smooth rapport between stage and orchestra pit. There's more to this new "Eugene Onegin" than the present musical team can show us, and perhaps its qualities will come more clearly into view when the production can be revived with a truly distinctive cast and conductor.

Review 2:

Program Note by Peter Clark
EUGENE ONEGIN AT THE MET

Although Eugene Onegin is Tchaikovsky’s most frequently performed opera at the Metropolitan, it was slow to get a foothold in the repertory. Perhaps the greatest obstacle it presented was one of language. Early in the twentieth century, Russian opera was presented in translation at the Met, usually Italian or French. By mid-century, English translations became the norm for Russian operas. In fact, the Met did not perform a complete opera in Russian until the early 1970’s when Queen of Spades (1972) and Boris Godunov (1974) were finally given in the original language. The only exception to this tradition was Feodor Chaliapin, who sang Boris in Russian in the 1920’s, while the rest of the cast performed in Italian.

Eugene Onegin’s 1921 Met premiere was in Italian with a cast of an opera lover’s dreams – Claudia Muzio, Giovanni Martinelli, and Giuseppe De Luca. Despite the stars, the opera was not a success. After only two seasons, Onegin disappeared until a new production brought it back in 1957, sung in English, with Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting, and Lucine Amara, George London, and Richard Tucker in leading roles. (Original plans had Renata Tebaldi as Tatiana, but she did not want to sing it in English; clearly issues of language continued to be problematic.) Subsequent revivals continued in English until the 1977-78 season, when James Levine, who had recently been appointed music director, felt the time was right to give the opera in its original Russian.

The first Met radio broadcast of Eugene Onegin in the original Russian was conducted by Levine on February 18, 1978. The New York Post wrote that Levine "infused it with dramatic fire" and the opera was "transformed into vivid musical-theater." Teresa Zylis-Gara, the Tatiana, "sang with great beauty and finesse" and "kept her listeners spellbound." In the title role Sherrill Milnes’ "gorgeous voice and handsome physique were put to subtle use to express Onegin’s worldly sophistication." Nicolai Gedda had sung his first Met Lensky twenty years earlier, and still commanded everything necessary for the role, not least of which was his complete mastery of Russian. Gedda sang "in beautiful style, with color and nuance" receiving the performance’s biggest ovation for his Act II aria. Paul Plishka sang Prince Gremin, Isola Jones was Olga, and James Atherton, Monsieur Triquet.

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Met careers

• Antonio Pappano [Conductor]
• Vladimir Chernov [Eugene Onegin]
• Galina Gorchakova [Tatiana]
• Neil Shicoff [Lensky]
• Marianna Tarassova [Olga]
• Vladimir Ognovenko [Prince Gremin]
• Jane Shaulis [Larina]
• Irina Arkhipova [Filippyevna]
• Michel Sénéchal [Triquet]
• Denis Sedov [Captain]
• Yanni Yannissis [Zaretsky]
• Marcus Bugler [Dance]
• Victoria Rinaldi [Dance]
• Robert Carsen [Production]
• Serge Bennathan [Choreographer]
• Michael Levine [Designer]
• Jean Kalman [Lighting Designer]