Opera review: Eugene Onegin by the Garsington Opera
Pushkin's verse-novel Eugene Onegin is a classic tale of unrequited love.
The young Tatyana has a crush on Eugene who spurns her. Then he kills his best friend in a duel, sails away for several years and returns to find the now mature Tatyana married to another man.
Seeing the error of his ways, he declares his love for her, but this time, it's her turn to reject him. And they all live unhappily ever after.
It's a perfect anguish-ridden plot for an opera, and Tchaikovsky does it full justice with some of his finest emotionally charged music.
In this new production at the Wormsley estate by Garsington opera, the Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw and English baritone Roderick Williams give excellent portrayals of the two non-lovers.
Williams' portrayal of Eugene has a certain foppishness about it that both emphasizes his dismissive nature towards the young Tatyana, while also suggesting that his relationship with his friend and duelling victim Lensky may have more to it than we are told.
Much has been written suggesting that Tchaikovsky expressed his own repressed homosexuality in his version of Pushkin's story, and the Garsington production, directed by Michael Boyd, leans delicately in that direction.
Lensky himself, excellently sung by Ukrainian baritone Oleksiy Palchykov, is the only other major character in the story, until he is killed, of course, but he dies return to have the last dance with Eugene.
The supporting cast does its job very well, with Brindley Sherratt particularly worth mentioning in the role of Prince Gremin, the retired general whom Tatyana marries.
He only has one major aria in the opera, but delivers it beautifully.
VERDICT 4/5