EUGENIO ONEGUIN

Eugenio Oneguin, letters for a misunderstanding

The serialised novel in verse that inspired and gave its name to Pyotr Ilyich Chaikovski'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. 

The young and promising conductor Timur Zangiev, a disciple of Gennady Rozhdestvensky, makes his debut as Music Director of this second production of Eugene Onegin at Les Arts. He has been praised for his impeccable technique and arrives with the endorsement of successful performances of Chaikovski's The Queen of Spades at La Scala and Prokofiev's The Gambler at the Salzburg Festival, as well as Onegin at La Scala and, soon, at the Metropolitan and the Vienna State Opera. The thorny love triangle at the heart of the opera's plot has been entrusted to a trio of vocal aces led by Mattia Olivieri - a former student of the Centre de Perfeccionament, currently enjoying an international career - who makes his debut as Onegin in Valencia, alongside veteran Dmitry Korchak, once again as Lenski, and soprano Corinne Winters - who made such a pleasant impression in Jenůfa - in the role of Tatiana. Laurent Pelly, following his successful Cenerentola, shows his dramatic side in this acclaimed production at La Monnaie in Brussels, which is moving and visually stunning, highlighting the poetic essence of Pushkin's eponymous work.