Piotr Ilich Chaikovski 1840-1893
Lyric scenes in three actsLibretto by Konstantin Shilovski and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, based upon the eponymous novel by Alexander Pushkin
Premiere: 29 March 1879Theatre Maly, Moscow
Eugenio Oneguin, letters for a misunderstandingThe serialised novel in verse that inspired and gave its name to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's opera, written by Alexander Pushkin between 1823 and 1831, tells the dramatically parallel and irreconcilable life stories of three young people - Tatiana, Lenski and Onegin - marked from the beginning of their short lives by cultural differences: Tatiana, who writes in French but reveals her pure Russian soul; Lenski, educated in the Germanic tradition; and Onegin, an aspiring English dandy with melancholic Byronic outbursts. The composer combines the Russian nature through instrumental contributions with the universality of the human message in the dramatic treatment. He turns the verse novel’s Onegin stanzas, with their curious constant dialogue between the masculine and the feminine rhymes, into a succession of lyrical scenes that, in keeping with the theatrical convention of the time, are presented in three acts centred on the scene of Tatiana's letter to Onegin.
