OPERA North brought Tchaikovsky’s powerful opera Eugene Onegin back to the Leeds Grand after 43 years and have served up a feast for the senses.
Reimagined and set in Russia around the fall of the iron curtain, rather than mid-1800s, the curtain opens to a vast hall of simple brutalist construction, dilapidated with peeling paint and sections of roof damaged. Taking up the space of the hall are two sets of bleacher type seating making the space reminiscent of a sports hall or gymnasium.
This is the only change however as sisters Tatyana (Verity Wingate) and Olga (Jingwen Cai) perform the opening arias, Have you not heard, and Ah Tanya with grace and skill, setting the scene for what is to come. Olga’s childhood sweetheart Lensky (Caspar Singh) comes to visit with a friend Onegin (John Brancy) who Tatyana falls in love with, writing him a letter telling him of her feelings. Onegin rejects her love, responding that if he were the marrying kind he'd marry only her, but he is not and leaves her broken-hearted.
John Brancy as Eugene Onegin and Verity Wingate as Tatyana. Image James Glossop
Some months later a dance is held in the same hall, Lensky and Onegin return and during the dancing Onegin, annoyed at Lensky’s happiness with Olga, flirts with her to show Tatyana he doesn’t care for her. Lensky, enraged, challenges him to a duel. The next morning, as the duel approaches, Lensky performs the aria O golden days of my spring, reflecting on his youth and accepting whatever fate may deal him. The duel, a form of Russian roulette, ends with Lansky dead. Onegin, distraught at the results of his actions, leaves to travel abroad.
On his return Onegin sees Tatyana, now a beautiful, confidant woman, married to an older man, Prince Gremin (Joshua Bloom) who tells Onegin in the aria Love knows no age of his love for Tatyana, and how he feels younger with her. Onegin catches Tatyana alone, telling her how he now realises his mistake and asking her to be with him. The tables are turned; she replies that she's happy and he merely wants to ruin her happiness or benefit from the wealth of her husband. Onegin realises that in spurning Tatyana he will have no second chance.
The company of Eugene Onegin. Image: James Glossop
The music of Tchaikovsky is performed beautifully with the orchestra of Opera North under the baton of Garry Walker never threatening to drown out the performers. The interspersed dances (waltz, mazurka, and polonaise), are a hint of the flowing ballet scores Tchaikovsky is famous for, allowing them to show the power they have at their disposal.
The singing of both leads and chorus is flawless. I particularly enjoyed Caspar Singh and Joshua Bloom, as Lensky and Gremin, who performed their arias with such depth of emotion and power. Verity Wingate and Jingwen Cai as sisters, Tatyana and Olga, captured the spirit of youth and love awakening.
Onegin is a complex role, trying to balance the arrogance of his early appearances with the realisation that in killing Lensky and rejecting Tatyana he has given up all hopes of happiness. John Brancy managed to be at once almost despised by the audience to being pitied as the choices he made crashed around him.
Special mention to Leslie Travers for producing a set reminiscent of the Glasnost and Perestroika era, Elizabeth Gadsby for costumes that shout Russia in that period and Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design for enhancing both. Simple, grey, and foreboding, yet with touches of light and colour peeking through as if the first shoots of the new life for Russians could be glimpsed leading to the sparkle and glitz of the final act, all the while the dark shadows of foreboding never far away.
Opera is an art form that many people shy away from as being too high brow - this is not the case. Admittedly this production remains true to the original score and libretto sung throughout in Russian. But this does not take away from, indeed it enhances, the pure power of Tchaikovsky’s score by performers who can bring a tear to the eye with the passion of their vocals.
These are masters of their craft, they hold the audience in their palm, through the international language of music.
* Eugene Onegin runs at Leeds Grand Theatre until October 29.