Arts & Events

Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin has long been one of my favorite operas. So I looked forward to an acclaimed production of Eugene Onegin by Canadian director Robert Carson that is currently presented at San Francisco Opera. Alas, when I attended this production on October 1.  

I was sorely disappointed. Robert Carson’s staging strips Eugene Onegin of nearly all the Russian local colour in which Alexander Pushkin steeped his famous verse novel. There is no country estate house wherein Madame Larina raises her two daughters, no gardens where Olga and Tatyana walk with their guests Lensky and Onegin, no interior where Tatyana’s name-day is celebrated, and so on. What we get instead, in Carson’s staging, is a an abstract setting of Eugene Onegin. To make matters worse, Carson makes frequent arbitrary choices that distract and detract from the wonderful music of Tchaikovsky’s opera. 

Carson’s Eugene Onegin was originally staged at the Met in New York in 1997. It was here staged in revival by Peter McClintock. Right from the outset, indeed, during the overture, Carson heavy-handedly raises the curtain on a single chair on a bare stage in which the character Eugene Onegin sits reading and then tearing up what appears to be the infamous love-letter that Tatyana sends him on the day after their first meeting. As the torn pieces of paper fall to the floor, the heavens unleash a torrent of falling paper (or birch leaves) that inundate Onegin and lliter the stage. However, in Carson’s staging, this letter inexplicably reappears throughout the opera, and, inexplicably, it is not torn in shreds. 

Fortunately, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is one of those operas, like all of Mozart’s operas, that contain such beautiful and emotionally incisive music that even a bad staging cannot spoil the audience’s enjoyment. But this bad staging of Eugene Onegin by Robert Carson does indeed distract and seriously detract from the audience’s enjoyment. And this is true in spite of San Francisco Opera’s offering a fine cast and a conductor, Vassilis Christopoulos, who here makes his auspicious American debut. Heading the cast was Russian soprano Evgenia Muraveva as Tatyana; and with her multi-hued vocalism she was admirably paired with bass-baritone Gordon Bintner as Onegin. Also excellent were lyric tenor Evan LeRoy Johnson as Lensky and mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina as Tatyana’s sister Olga. And Act III brought us the magnificent Ferruccio Furlanetto as Prince Gremin, Tatyana’s eventual husband. (On opening night of this Eugene Onegin, Ferruccio Furlanetto was awarded San Francisco Opera’s Medal of Honour for his forty-plus years of outstanding performances here.) Also included in the fine cast were mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel as Madame Larina and mezzo-soprano Ronita Miller as Flipyevna, Tatyana’s nanny. Tenor Brenton Ryan was an engaging Monsieur Triquet; and small roles were sung by bass Stefan Egerstrom as Zaretsky and tenor Michael Jankowsky as a Peasant. 

Whereas Pushkin’s novel focuses primarily on the restless, aimless character of Onegin, Tchaikovsky shifts the focus to concentrate on Tatyana, a sensitive young provincial woman whose head has been turned by reading too many novels of lovers who struggle to rise above the obstacles society places before them. When Tatyana first sets eyes on Eugene Onegin, a neighbour from a nearby country estate, she declares to herself ”He is the one.” Later that night, unable to sleep, Tatyana impulsively writes a passionate letter to Onegin confessing her love. The writing of this letter is quizzically staged by Robert Carson in what barely suggests a bedroom, with only a bed and a table and chair, no walls, a trapdoor through which the nanny Flipevna enters and exits, and a crescent moon hanging over the largely bare stage. The trapdoor is a particularly arbitrary and off-putting stage conceit of Robert Carson’s. Vocally, Evgenia Muraveva offered a letter scene that was a mixture of conflicting emotions — a sometimes passionate outburst of love and at other times a fear that Onegin will despise her for opening up her soul to him. The orchestra is a major element in this letter scene, and occasionally Evgenia Muaraveva failed to sing loudly enough to overcome the flood of emotions that the orchestra unleashes at moments when Tatyana tries to hold back her emotions. On the whole, however, Evgenia Muraveva sang convincingly in this crucial, indeed, central letter scene. 

The next day, when Onegin confronts Tatyana, once again in an abstract void in Carson’s staging, he acknowledges being moved by her letter but sententiously admonishes her for naïvely opening her heart in such a vulnerable way. Onegin also adds, with accurate self-appraisal, that he is not a man to settle down with a wife and raise a family. Tatyana is crushed and secretly humiliated by Onegin’s coldly analytic rejection of her love. 

The plot thickens, however, when Lensky invites his friend Onegin to a ball held at the Larin household. Bored with the rustic gentility, Onegin decides to chide his friend Lensky by inviting Lensky’s fiancée Olga to dance. During their dance, Onegin purposely flirts with Olga to punish Lensky, who takes offence at what he sees. When Lensky takes umbrage at Onegin’s behaviour, an argument ensues between these two close friends. The argument quickly reaches a point of no return when Lensky impulsively throws down a hankerchief and challenges Onegin to a duel. For his oart, Onegin acknowledges in an aside that he has gone too far, but he cannot refuse the challenge or lose face, so he agrees to the duel and the friends part company. 

The next day, Lensky arrives before dawn at the place of the duel. He sings a most beautiful, poignant aria reminiscing forlornly over the golden years of his youthful love for Olga. This aria was admirably sung by tenor Evan LeRoy Johnson, and it was indeed the vocal highlight of this performance of Eugene Onegin. In the ensuing duel, Lensky is shot by Onegin and dies, mourned by his former friend. 

Act III opens with yet another parade of extras carrying empty chairs and setting them in place in an otherwise abstract stage-scene, an all too frequently recurring visual motif in Robert Carson’s staging. (Incidentally, why was it deemed necessary, in an abstract staging with minimal sets, to have long silent, pauses between scene changes? This seemed unnecessary and it interrupted the emotional flow of this highly emotional opera.) This Act III scene opens in an elegant ball in St. Petersburg, where the courtly glitterati of Russia dance an elegant Polonaise, which, in this abstract setting, was less than elegant and nearly passed unnoticed. Onegin, who has only this day returned from restless years abroad, finds himself bored once again by the meaningless life of yet another ball. But his interest is piqued when he recognises Tatyana, who is now the elegant, poised and self-assured wife of the eminent Prince Gremin. After Ferruccio Furlanetto sings his admirable paean in praise of his wife of two years, Onegin is suddenly overcome with remorse at his rebuke, years ago, of Tatyana’s offer of her love. But here too, I find fault with Robert Carson’s staging, when he spotlights Onegin in such a way that his huge shadow appears on the wall behind the assembled nobles at the ball. 

Then, in the opera’s final scene, after yet another excruciating pause, Tatyana, who has excused herself from the ball, is seen seated in a chair in her drawing-room re-reading the infamous letter she impulsively sent as a naïve young woman to Onegin. When Onegin rushes in and declares his love, Tatyana reluctantly admits that she loves him still, but that she is a devoted wife of a man who truly loves her and to whom she will remain faithful. In spite of Onegin going on bended knee and imploring her to leave Gremin and run away with him, Tatyana returns her letter to Onegin and exits the scene, leaving a thoroughly disillusioned Onegin to stew in his own juices, as the opera ends.