Eugene Onegin

There's a division which slices through Tchaikovsky's opera, Eugene Onegin, between romantic love and what Madame Larina, the lady of the manor, terms "the real world". The tragedy of Pushkin's text is a series of revelations as to the irreconcilability of romance with this world of social and economic concerns. It's a discord which the young singers from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama do, at times, manage to find the sore point of.

 

The production marks another of what is becoming a regular collaboration between RSAMD and Scottish Opera. The plot is unusual: Onegin rejects Tatiana's love then spends years in exile after killing his best friend, Lensky, in a duel. Upon returning, though, Onegin finds himself dangerously attracted to Tatiana who, in a change of roles, now painfully resists his advances. There's a lot made of the fact that Onegin was first performed in 1879 by students from the Moscow Conservatory, but one suspects Tchaikovsky of simply hedging his bets, testing out an opera about crushed romances away from the stern gaze of professional critics. Indeed, one can't help but feel that Charlotte Tetley as Madame Larina is far too young and beautiful to pull off the Russian country matriarch, though her physical and vocal acting certainly helps overcome this.

 

On the other hand, Maria Kozlova as Tatiana (note there are two alternating casts for lead roles) looks and sounds precisely like the naïve lover of romance novels she ought to be. More might be made of the letter-writing scene, which is perhaps underplayed. Felipe Oliveira's Onegin is both physically and vocally imposing, which makes for great drama as the sexual flirt is transformed into a terrifying, lovestruck wretch. Jung Soo Yun as Lensky does not always have the glossy, romantic tone one might expect from the idealistic young poet – except when he places flowers on his own, imaginary, grave during the duel scene.

 

Singing in Russian, the cast do admirably, but it's Gevorg Grigoryan as Count Gremin who provides the real show-stopper, with what sounds like a bona fide Russian bass delivery. Of course, it helps that Grogoryan really is a bona fide Russian bass, as one of two cast members on exchange from the Rostov-on-Don conservatory – an exchange programme which should prove to be a real asset for RSAMD in the future.

 

Under Timothy Dean's baton, the Orchestra of Scottish opera—bolstered by fifteen of RSAMD's own players—is consistently on the money, shaping the tumult between romance and violence. The horns are lyrical and beguiling, the trombones braying and aggressive; though the interplay between the two is rarely contrived or jarring, rather, one dovetails neatly into the other. Power politics wheedle their way into romance in ways which are insidious and unsettling.

 

Worthy of note is Becs Andrews's superb set design. The Larina estate, for instance, is carved up by a fence which seeks to keep the economic realities of peasant life separate from Tatiana and Olga's bourgeois romances. The arrival of Onegin from the city and Tatiana's passion for the wealthy dandy triggers the metaphorical destruction of this artificial barrier. Elsewhere, Tatiana's bedroom—the scene of bookish, idealised romance—is suitably impressionistic. A red cloth backdrop, knotted to form a stylised window, is stripped back to reveal surreal towers of books which Tatiana mounts as she completes the doomed love-letter to Onegin – a triumph which, in RSAMD's Eugene Onegin, is as imaginary and precarious as those teetering piles of romantic novels.