Eugene Onegin, Tiroler Landestheater, 26 April 2025

Images: Birgit Gufler
Onegin (Jacob Phillips), Sie (Eleonore Bürcher), Tatiana (Marie Smolka)

Eugene Onegin: Jacob Phillips
Tatiana: Marie Smolka
Lensky: Alexander Fedorov
Olga: Bernarda Klinar
Prince Gremin: Oliver Sailer
Mme Larina: Abongile Fumba
Filipyevna: Fotini Athanasaki
Zaretsky: Julien Horbatuk
Monsieur Triquet: Jason Lee
Captain: Stanislav Stambolov
Sie: Eleonore Bürcher
Precentor: Junghwan Lee

Director: Eva-Maria Höckmayr
Designs: Julia Rösler
Dramaturgy: Diana Merkel

Chorus and Extra Chorus of the Tiroler Landestheater (chorus director: Michael Roberger)

Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck

Matthew Toogood (conductor) 

Innsbruck is celebrated as a centre for early music and was, of course, a great centre for what was then contemporary music from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, as both capital of the Tyrol and Maximilian I’s Residenzstadt. (It is impossible to avoid his presence, even if for some eccentric reason one should wish to do so.) The Tiroler Landestheater is perhaps less well known to outsiders, but consistently offers adventurous programming in musical and spoken theatre as well as dance. This year’s opera programme ranges from Purcell (King Arthur) to Schoenberg (Von heute auf morgen, in a double-bill with I Pagliacci). I had initially thought I was coming to La clemenza di Tito, but confusion over dates left me with the perfectly acceptable substitute of Eugene Onegin. For devotees of a different kind of musical theatre, the musical Hair is on offer too. 

Eva-Maria Höckmayr’s new production of Onegin can be understood to offer three principal lines of approach: abstraction, feminism, and memory. The last of those is intrinsic to the work, yet is emphasised here in a staging introduced by an enigmatic woman styled simply ‘Sie’ (‘she’ or ‘her’) in possession of Tatiana’s letter or a copy thereof. I initially assumed this was Tatiana later in life, and indeed it might be, but I do not think that is ever rendered explicit in her spoken words. Perhaps it is better to think of her as an Everywoman, who could be archetypal or more specific, according to one’s particular standpoint. Often movingly portrayed by Eleonore Bürcher she observes and occasionally interacts—though the interaction is probably more on her side than that of the others. Memory is like that, though perhaps not entirely, at least in our imagination. Onegin and Tatiana look forward too, after all, accurately or otherwise. The abstraction of Julia Rösler’s set designs, combined with relative, slightly stylised historicity of her costumes likewise creates space not only for more than one standpoint but for their interaction in work and performance. Acts of dressing and undressing contribute further, similarly reminding us that this is both drama and theatre (which involves artifice, and in a postdramatic age may or may not involve drama). 

Tatiana, Onegin, Lensky (Alexander Fedorov)

The feminist or at least female angle is understandable and common to many stagings. No one should object, but I have my doubts with this specific work (whilst, I hope, retaining an open mind). The problem is not so much that this is an opera called Eugene Onegin, not Tatiana Larina. There are plenty of works whose title roles are not their central one; we do not complain that Rameau wrote Hippolyte et Aricie, for instance. Nor is there any intrinsic problem with decentring a character; it can benefit all characters, the decentred one included, as for instance we saw in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Aix Carmen. Instead, the problem lies with Tchaikovsky having created an opera in which, unless one is careful, Tatiana (whose feelings are surely in large part a projection of his own) already overshadows the others. To my mind, a richer and more balanced dramatic treatment necessitates a little gentle help for Onegin to emerge, most likely (though not necessarily) bringing out the torment of his feelings for Lensky: important in themselves, but also because they and the situation created bring Lensky and Olga, arguably Prince Gremin, to life too. The score suggests, even straightforwardly tells us things Pushkin does not. Here, Lensky and Olga in particular seemed a little lost, abandoned even, as surplus to requirements. One can say, of course, that Tatiana deserves to be rescued from homosexual projection, to become her own character. That is a laudable aim, but I think it happens anyway in the third act, and the danger of overbalancing is greater. Still, this is a general issue I have with stagings of the work, not with this one, which pursues its approach with intelligence and a welcome openness.   

Moreover, Höckmayr and Marie Smolka present an undeniably interesting, sympathetic Tatiana, especially in the first act, where we see her so shy, perhaps even emotionally crippled, that she can hardly bear look Onegin in the face, let alone touch him, in evidenf contrast with the existing warm relationship between Lensky and Olga. Smolka’s portrayal warmed as her character did, in general finely spun vocally and dramatically. Jacob Phillips’s thoughtful Onegin offered a trajectory of its own, always working with yet far from limited to the text. If it was not favoured by the production, its quality was such that it nonetheless had space to shine. Alexander Fedorov’s Lensky was ardent, involving, again to an extent that it overcame the challenge imparted by the production. Jason Lee’s Triquet brought a welcome sense of theatricality and ambiguity. Other parts were well taken, but for me the evening’s true discovery was Abongile Fumba, whose rich-toned, compassionate Mme Larina had me keen to hear her in more extended roles. Oliver Sailer's Prince Gremin rightly drew enthusiastic applause at the close.

Orchestra and chorus showed themselves flexible throughout. If, at times, Matthew Toogood’s tempi seemed a little slow, I suspect that was from a concern, successfully achieved, to assist a cast of mostly young singers grow into its roles rather than an overall conception. That such a work can be cast from company singers and that others will be too speaks of the ongoing worth of a system British ‘major’ houses have long since abandoned, to their – and our – detriment. For now, in the words of that celebrated Renaissance song by Heinrich Issac, ‘Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen,’ but I hope to return.

The Queen of Spades, Deutsche Oper, 20 March 2024

PIQUE DAME von Pjotr I. Tschaikowskij, Premiere am 9. März 2024 in der Deutschen Oper Berlin,
copyright: Marcus Lieberenz
Countess (Doris Soffel) and Hermann (Martin Muehle)

Hermann – Martin Muehle
Tomsky – Lucio Gallo
Prince Yeletsky – Thomas Lehman
Chekalinsky – Chance Jonas-O’Toole
Surin – Kyle Miller
Chaplitsky – Andrew Dickinson
Narumov – Artur Garbas
Master of Ceremonies – Jörg Schörner
The Countess – Doris Soffel
Lisa – Maria Motolygina
Pauline – Karia Tucker
Governess – Nicole Piccolomini
Masha – Arianna Manganello
Children’s commander – Sofia Kaspruk
Little Hermann – Aleksandr Sher
Little Lisa – Alma Kraushaar
Stage piano – Jisu Park
Old servant – Wolfgang Siebner

Director – Sam Brown
Designer – Stuart Nunn
Choreography – Ron Howell
Video – Martin Eidenberger
Lighting – Linus Fellborn
Assistant directors – Constanze Weidknecht, Silke Sense
Dramaturgy – Konstantin Parnian

Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (director: Christian Lindhorst)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (director: Jeremy Bines)

Statisterie, and Opernballet of the Deutsche Oper

Sebastian Weigle (conductor)  

The late Graham Vick was to have directed this new production of The Queen of Spades for the Deutsche Oper. According to the cast list, Vick laid down the principles for the production, but his successor Sam Brown, charged with bringing the project to completion, alongside designer Stuart Nunn and choreographer (and Vick’s widower) Ron Howell, will necessarily have brought much that his own to the piece. As he says in an interview, ‘I knew that the framework that he’d created provides a lot of room for conceptual freedom. … It may sound dramatic, but Graham’s ideas for PIQUE DAME outside of the equipment died with him. As a director, I have to walk my own path.’ Tempting though it may be to speculate what comes from whom, that is hardly the point. Having noted the situation, it is better to move on to discuss what it is we see and hear.

Chekalinsky (Chance Jonas-O'Toole), Tomsky (Lucio Gallo), Surin (Kyle Miller)

Layering of memory is a particular strength. Tchaikovsky – and his brother and librettist, Modest, as well of course as Pushkin – play with memories of the eighteenth century. That is doubled by the Countess’s memories of her ‘own’, earlier eighteenth century, Mme de Pompadour and all. The Grétry air is another case in point. In this production, without being merely indeterminate or arbitrary, which would defeat the point, further nesting occurs, for instance in the silent film excerpts (from a Russian adaptation of 1916), but also in the dressing and undressing of particular characters at different points, as well as in broader designs. Spanning three centuries – the nineteenth may not be overtly depicted on stage, but it is always present – is not an easy trick to bring off, but it is meaningfully accomplished here. Moreover, it is with us from the start, the opening scene with children’s chorus pointing to much of what is to come. A maltreated child, a social outsider even then, is abused by children and adults alike, only to have a little girl briefly come to him and show a little kindness. It prefigures what is to come, but perhaps it is also a memory. In this opera, though, it is always too late. The cards dealt by fate can never be changed, despite – or because of – their entirely random nature in what is no game of skill. 

Hermann, Countess

The cast acts out this game and propels it with great skill, heightening and extending its outlines in much the same way the production does. Martin Muehle’s Hermann is tireless, anguish-ridden, obsessive, perhaps a little on the Verdian side of Tchaikovsky, but I am not sure it behoves me, as one who speaks no Russian, to be too fussy here. It was above all his journey of catastrophe, and no one could doubt that Muehle grasped his fate and followed it. But it is not only his journey; part of the problem is surely that the characters are heading in different, mutually opposed and uncomprehending directions. Maria Motolygina’s Lisa, unable to escape from her childhood and clearly presented as such, was by the same token beautifully, often heartrendingly sung, her final scene powerful indeed. As expected, Doris Soffel’s Countess stole the show: not only a sterling performance, that ‘ancient’ air included, but one showing her sexual drives to be as strong as ever, perhaps even more so. Perhaps if she too had questioned her obsessions, she might have been happier—but is there any meaning in that ‘perhaps’? Thomas Lehman’s Yeletsky was finely sung indeed, as, in smaller roles, were Karia Tucker’s Pauline, Andrew Dickinson’s Chaplitsky, Chance Jonas-O’Toole’s Chekalinsky, Kyle Miller’s Surin, and many more, up to and including the chorus. Lucio Gallo’s virile, contemptuously masculine Tomsky showed how this singer can still absolutely hold the stage. Raunchy masked-ball choreography from Howell and excellent performances from the dancers not only returned to several questions already posed, but also asked a good number of their own.

Sebastian Weigle’s conducting had its moments, especially during the third act. (The opera was essentially given in scenes rather than acts, the interval given, as is often the case, following the arrival of Catherine the Great in the middle of the second act.) Then it became more idiomatic, conjuring up from the excellent Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper more of a Tchaikovskian sound than had previously been the case. We should not be too essentialist about such matters, but much previously had sounded rather on the Germanic side, albeit with distinctly odd balances, strings in particular notably subdued. A lack of dramatic sweep, without anything obvious put in its place, proved frustrating. 

Catherine the Great (Doris Soffel)

Singing and production continued, though, to offer considerable compensation. Soffel’s reappearance as Catherine the Great suggested she and the Countess were one and the same, her mocking laughter at the end of that third scene echoing the Countess’s ghostly reappearance (dressed as Lisa) to name the three cards. Was this all, then, just Hermann’s fevered imagination? And if so, to put it bluntly, what is the point? What we saw was not so cut and dried as that. Indeed, one of the projector quotations between scenes, from Dostoevsky, considering the nature of fantasy, how it must come close to reality, made that clear. 

If the scales here are tilted towards fantasy rather than reality, more so than any other production I can recall and than I have tended to think of it, then this remains a single production, concentrating fruitfully on a particular standpoint; another will be free to do something else. And it is only limited by it to the extent that almost any standpoint will limit: it enabled and heighted a strong sense of fate, from which not only Hermann, but also Lisa and indeed the Countess wish to escape, yet ultimately knew they cannot—and do not. 

There is, I think, something psychoanalytical to the approach. Certainly everything appears to be built on misunderstandings or downright lies: untruths, at any rate. What Hermann wants does not really exists; what Lisa wants does not really exist; what the Countess has wanted all her life has probably never existed at all. That holds for others too, not least Yeletsky. For all his apparent good fortune, he loses Lisa, and there is no sense of triumph in his final victory over Hermann. That it ends with a third and final death, all three ultimate protagonists departed, seems fitting in a sense that goes beyond Romantic death wish. Perhaps it is here, then, that the fantastic twist properly resumes, bidding us continue to question what we have seen and heard.

Eugene Onegin, Komische Oper, 15 December 2023

Schillertheater

Eugene Onegin – Günter Papendell
Tatiana – Ruzan Mantashyan
Olga – Deniz Uzun
Lensky – Gerard Schneider
Mme Larina – Stefanie Schaefer
Prince Gremin – Tijl Faveyts
Filipievna – Margarita Nekrasova
M. Triquet – Christoph Späth
Zaretsky – Ferhat Baday
Captain – Jan-Frank Süße
Guillot – Alexander Kohl

Barrie Kosky (director)
Werner Sauer (revival director)
Rebecca Ringst (set designs)
Klaus Bruns (costumes)
Simon Berger (dramaturgy)
Franck Evin (lighting)

Orchestra and Chorus (chorus director: David Cavelius) of the Komische Oper

James Gaffigan (conductor)

Images: Iko Freese / drama-berlin.de

I first saw Barrie Kosky’s Eugene Onegin, premiered in 2016, in 2019, a few months before the theatres closed. Then it was at the Komische Oper’s permanent home on Behrenstraße. Now, the building having closed for several years for renovation, this latest revival may be seen across town in Charlottenburg’s Schillertheater, conducted by the company’s new music director James Gaffigan. The cast is a mix of old and new, Günter Papendell, Stefanie Schaefer, Tijl Faveyts, and Margarita Nekrasova survivors from 2019, the rest new (at least to me). 

Memory, though, is a strange thing; or rather, ‘memories’ are, since even one’s own will come into conflict with one another. Although I remembered liking what I saw, what I saw on this occasion did not always correspond to my recollections, which may indeed have been of other productions, real or imagined. Much the same might be said of what unfolds here (in many dramas, no doubt, yet it seems or seemed more than usually germane here). For there are certainly misunderstandings, missed opportunities, ‘bad timing’, and the rest in the relationships, not only Onegin and Tatiana’s, of Eugene Onegin. That of Tatiana and Prince Gremin may be an exception; yet if so, it is dependent on the failures of another. It is, in any case, hardly the central relationship; it serves as a contrast to what might have been, an antidote of reality to fantasy. Kosky’s setting the entire action in the same place, with one partial exception, brings with it some loss, not least in the inevitably lesser contrast between public and private, whose portrayal therefore becomes still more a matter for the orchestra. Yet its dramaturgical function here also brings with it considerable gain, anchoring character’s differing understandings, memories, and decisions in Rebecca Ringst’s almost pastoral, outdoor setting that yet takes in threatening woods behind. (It is not as if the libretto suddenly vanishes when all stage directions are not adhered to literally.) Although real enough – it is not abstract – it imparts something of a dream-like quality, in which not only memories but, at least as important, objects bind everything together.

 

Jam and jam-jars, for instance: when the opera opens, Mme Larina and the nurse Filipievna are making jam, readily eaten by Tatiana and Olga. When Tatiana sends her letter to Onegin, it is inside a jar sent as a gift. And so on, until the close, when it is there in what seems to be the same place: where it all (tragically?) began. There is something would-be bacchanalian to the ball scene, when it takes place outdoors. This, one feels, is as far away from civilisation as these characters, this society, dare travel. And, of course, it leads to the frozen, pointless misery of the duel scene. Onegin, moreover, does not face the decentring he sometimes can. There is plenty of and for Tatiana too, but we feel – and, I think, have suggested to us – more of his miserable wandering, his downward spiral than usual. Helplessly drunk when he arrives for the duel, he shows that it is already too late for him, let alone for Lensky. His early stiffness is probably a self-defence mechanism; at any rate, we feel its relationship to what is to come. All the while, subtle transformations in Franck Evin’s lighting aid the transformations, both gradual and sudden, in the drama itself. And when a room in Gremin’s palace appears, for the first St Petersburg scene, Onegin by now a sad, destroyed outsider, it is only to be dismantled onstage shortly after, in preparation for the ’return’ to a past which may or may not have ‘actually’ existed for the final scene.

 

Kosky’s conception remains the guiding one. The Komische Oper’s new music director, James Gaffigan, conducting his first production in the role, would appear to have been presented with certain challenges, not least among them caesuras when all stops, hearts included, all falls silent. On this, the first night of Werner Sauer’s revival, Gaffigan integrated these and other ‘givens’ to excellent effect. His reading, like Kosky’s, seemed to gain pace and depth as the evening progressed, the orchestra responding with eagerness to the vision with which it was presented. Almost chamber-like in scale to begin with, its Petersburg grandeur was undeniable, both in itself and in contrast. Choral contributions were likewise as well acted (and blocked) as sung.

 

Papendell’s Onegin follows and, to an extent, leads that trajectory too. It was a compelling portrayal in 2019 and is in 2023, his brokenness in the third act deeply moving. Ruzan Mantashyan travelled on a different, related journey as Tatiana, convincingly the shy, bookish girl at the outset, very much a woman at the close, albeit one struggling to keep herself in one piece. This she accomplished through musical and gestural means alike—as well as fine costuming (Klaus Bruns) and make-up. If I sometimes wished Gerard Schneider would adopt a less Verdian approach as Lensky, his was an undoubtedly committed performance, greatly superior to what I had heard from another singer four years ago. Deniz Uzun’s extravert Olga was a joy—and a telling contrast with her more complicated sister. Faveyts and Nekrasova at least matched memories of their excellent portrayals last time around: not a bad summary of the evening as a whole. The company may be on the move physically, but not aesthetically, whether that be in direction or quality.

Eugene Onegin, Opera Holland Park, 15 June 2022

Tatiana – Anush Hovhannisyan
Onegin – Samuel Dale Johnson

Lensky – Jack Roberts
Olga – Emma Stannard
Mme Larina – Amanda Roocroft

Filipievna – Kathleen Wilkinson
Prince Gremin – Matthew Stiff
M. Triquet – Joseph Buckmaster
Zaretsky/Captain – Konrad Jaromin
Solo tenor – Phillip Costovski

Julia Burbach (director)
takis (designs)
Robert Price (lighting)
Jo Meredith (movement)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus director: Richard Harker)
City of London Sinfonia
Lada Valešová (conductor)

 

Eugene Onegin (Samuel Dale Johnson).
Images: Ali Wright

Sharing a single set by takis with Carmen—typically resourceful, sustainable practice for Opera Holland Park—Julia Burbach’s Eugene Onegin proved a puzzling affair. The idea, I think, was to move between monochrome and colour, perhaps playing with memory and/or dreaming, but too much remained obscure or arbitrary (at least for me). Burbach seemed unsure whether to opt for realism, something more symbolic, or even a coherent melange of the two. Presumably, the uniform light colours of the first scene were intended to evoke a sort of Chekhovian boredom, but it seemed at odds with Pushkin, let alone Tchaikovsky.  Having everyone dressed in similar finery in that opening scene also suggested a chorus of nobles rather than peasants. For these were clearly the same people we encountered in the ball scene, and I do not think the intention was to suggest some sort of Russian Petit Trianon. Quite why some were playing badminton, I have no idea; it proved distracting in the wrong way, as had ‘peasant’ dancing earlier on. A turn through colour to black largely made emotional and narrative sense, yet details continued to sit oddly with the overall ‘picture’. Nothing ever quite moved convincingly, nor settled down.

It was also unquestionably the most heteronormative Onegin I have seen: a perverse distinction, one might say. Not only is there no sign, no inkling, nor even the slightest twinkling of an eye, of homosexual subtext; the characters are conventional enough in their relationships to be plausibly heterosexual. Perhaps if one were viewing work and creator from a Putinesque standpoint, that might signal cause for celebration. To the rest of us, it may seem strange or evasive.

That said, the cast did a fine job within these confines. Jack Roberts (an OHP Young Artist) and Emma Stannard gave a fine impression of Lensky and Olga as a young couple giddily in love. Their sheer enthusiasm proved infectious, not least given the curiously static production. Roberts’s sappy tenor and Stannard’s deep-toned mezzo proved just the vocal ticket too. Samuel Dale Johnson’s offered a thoughtful, well-sung performance as Onegin, both beguiling and infuriating in his mood swings. If the visual haunting demanded by Burbach in the Letter Scene seemed somewhat contrived, Dale Johnson’s subtler vocal version thereafter, culminating tragically in buyer’s remorse, was far more convincing. Anush Hovhannisyan’s Tatina gained in confidence as the evening went on: character development of course, but also, I think, in strength of performance. By the final scene, this was a formidable portrayal indeed. There were no weak links onstage, Kathleen Wilkinson’s Filipievna and Konrad Jaromin’s appearances as Zaretsky and the Captain especially catching the ear.

Tatiana (Anush Hovhannisyan)

Lada Valešová’s direction of the City of London Sinfonia seemed, laudably, engineered to follow these particular performances and production, rather than being imposed upon them. Was her languorous, intimate way with the first act too much of a muchness? That is probably a question of taste. It is not how I hear the work, but there was a thoughtful approach at work here. I missed a sense of abandon in the big public scenes, though Valešová’s scrupulousness offered alternative rewards.  One should also bear in mind that she was working with—and emphatically with—a chamber orchestra. A larger orchestra, as well as a different production, may well have brought forth a different musical reading.

Eugene Onegin, Komische Oper, 20 September 2019

Images copyright: Iko Freese / drama-berlin.de

Eugene Onegin – Günter Papendell

Tatiana – Natalya Pavlova

Olga – Karolina Gumos

Lensky – Aleš Briscein

Mme Larina – Stefanie Schaefer

Prince Gremin – Tijl Faveyts

Filipievna – Margarita Nekrasova

Zareski – Changdai Park

M. Triquet – Alexander Fedorov

Zaretsky – Changdai Park

Captain – Carsten Lau

Guillot – Yuhei Sato

Barrie Kosky (director)
Rebecca Ringst (set designs)

Klaus Bruns (costumes)
Simon Berger (dramaturgy)
Franck Evin (lighting)

Orchestra and Chorus (chorus director: David Cavelius) of the Komische Oper

Ainārs Rubikis (conductor)

What’s in a name? Should Tchaikovsky’s opera – which, as Barrie Kosky states in the programme booklet, should be considered alongside Pushkin, not as its musical translation – really be called Eugene Onegin at all? Or would Tatiana Larina be the more fitting title? Eugene and Tatiana, perhaps? It is a silly question, really; for one thing, no one is going to rename the work, although someone, I suppose, might write another. But names aside, there will probably always be something of a tension between the centrality ascribed by a production to the opera’s two principal characters; and also something, moreover, of a tension between Tatiana and Onegin on one hand and Lensky, if more rarely Olga, on the other. It is difficult to imagine a successful or indeed pretty much any unsuccessful production that did not involve such tensions, although Achim Freyer, in his bizarre staging for the Staatsoper Unter den Berlin, a few hundred metres away, may be said to have accomplished that in his very typical way.

Kosky’s 2016 staging for Berlin’s Komische Oper, in co-production with Zurich, offers an intriguing, convincing blend of the broadly yet never lazily conventional; the slightly symbolic; and the point of detail, even the incidental, made more than that. The latter first: as the opera opens, Mme Larina and the nurse, Filipievna are making jam. I am not sure that I even recalled that point of detail, though I am sure that I will now. The jam jar, however, returns at a crucial point – in Kosky’s staging, that is – as container for Tatiana’s letter to Onegin. Her nurse, affecting not to understand for whom it is intended, keeps dropping it, casting it aside, until she relents and sets that train of events in motion. ‘So what?’ you may ask. So nothing, perhaps; but I think not. For the jar and its contents take us back to the opening, an apparently carefree summer afternoon, save of course for beneath the surface. Things have changed – and have stayed the same; such tends to be the way with life. And the chorus of local girls, more than usually an emanation of Tatiana’s unconscious – replication and contrast in Klaus Bruns’s costumes lightly make the point – has all along been framing, voicing, goading.

So too will the chorus, male and female, later on, as part of a more general pattern of contrasts and connections between public and private, indoor and outdoor, country and town; and the criss-crossing connections between those pairs of opposites. The fundamental setting, common to all scenes, is that of the meadow on which it all began: designer Rebecca Ringst’s simple, adaptable focus for development and memory. Franck Evin’s lighting works wonders in its partial transformations, highlighting (false or alienating?) community and Romantic loneliness, whilst never having us lose sight of where we are. So too, of course, do Kosky’s blocking and, more broadly, his story-telling. It does no harm for the ball to take place with torches outside for once; its stifling, tragic qualities are not lost. Only in the first St Petersburg scene is there an additional set design, but even then, the facade of Prince Gremin’s palace can, like all facades, readily be dismantled, so that we can turn to the inversion of our central pair’s fortunes and their resolution.

Like many directors, Kosky ignores the opera’s strong, at times overwhelming, homosexual subtexts: the ‘Romantic friendship’ between Onegin and Lensky and, of course, the figure of Tatiana herself as alter ego for Tchaikovsky, his fantasy of how a woman might feel and act. That, however, is simply not the concern of this particular production. For, in the programme booklet, Kosky expresses a preference for operas with ‘very simple stories and incredibly multifaceted themes and emotions – precisely as in Greek theatre,’ and also criticises composers who, over the past fifty years, have, allegedly, ‘simply set literature to music’. I am not quite so sure that it is as simple as that, nor that the comparison with ancient Greece is objectively meaningful in this case, as it certainly would be to Wagner; however, if it is to him, all the better. There is unquestionably a directness to Kosky’s telling of the story here, far from opposed to interpretation, but rather open to it, which works very well: as, say, in his Rusalka and his Pelléas, or indeed, harking back to Attic tragedy, in his Iphigénie en Tauride, all for the Komische Oper, yet sadly lacking in his Bayreuth Meistersinger. Whose opera is this anyway? Here, it conventionally, yet never stereotypically, moves from being Tatiana’s to Onegin’s; the latter character emerges in the reflection, the memories of the latter’s acts and emotions. That trajectory is delineated with a power only rarely achieved, at least in my experience.

Instrumental – or better, vocal – to that was Günter Papendell’s Onegin, thus perhaps rebalancing the scales slightly in that direction. To begin with, I felt somewhat nonplussed at the apparent woodenness of his portrayal, until I appreciated that it was a portrayal of woodenness, of coldness, to be humanly defrosted, as it certainly was during the course of the opera. This was a fine, memorable, and sophisticated conception of the role. It would be an exaggeration, indeed a vulgarisation, to say that Natalya Pavlova’s Tatiana moved straightforwardly in the opposite direction, but tension was present in that respect: the crossing of lines and lives that ultimately turns, we think, to tragedy. Her opening fragility, her heartfelt and beautifully sung Letter Scene, and her final struggle, seemingly achieved, for self-possession proved similarly memorable and sophisticated. Aleš Briscein’s Lensky was surprisingly coarse of tone to begin with, though it was an ardent performance; I could not help but wonder whether he were unwell. A spirited Olga in Karolina Gumos, a stylish and lively M. Triquet in Alexander Fedorov, a splendidly deep-voiced Gremin in Tijl Faveyts, and above all a richly expressive, compassionate Filipievna in Margarita Nekrasova had much to offer, in a typically strong company performance that had no weak links.

The chorus sang and acted well too, its stage direction always a Kosky strength. My sole, relative disappointment lay in aspects of Ainārs Rubikis’s conducting of the orchestra. At its best, especially in the middle scenes, there was a telling striving towards symphonism. Elsewhere, however, much was oddly hard-driven. There were striking disjunctures, moreover, between orchestra and chorus in the first scene. This was not, then, an Onegin to think of in the way of Semyon Bychkov’s (probably the best conducted I have heard in the theatre) or Daniel Barenboim’s (for Freyer, as mentioned above). This was Kosky’s Onegin rather than the conductor’s, yet it belonged as much to the singers and of course to their characters. That, I think, was a good part of its point: a point served well.

Salzburg Festival (1) - Argerich/WEDO/Barenboim: Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Lutosławski, 14 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

Schubert: Symphony no.8 in B minor, D 759, ‘Unfinished’

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto no.1 in B-flat minor, op.23

Lutosławski: Concerto for Orchestra

Martha Argerich (piano)

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli

Most likely our greatest living Schubert conductor, Daniel Barenboim lent credence to the claim in this West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performance of the Unfinished, the best I can recall since Bernard Haitink and the LSO ten years ago – and with the benefit of a far superior hall and acoustic to the Barbican, let alone the Royal Albert Hall, where Barenboim and his musicians had given the same programme a couple of nights earlier. Opening truly de profundis – an orchestra with a string section of this size truly helps here – and febrile, generative, it was clear from the outset that this would be special. This, it seemed, was music that had always been – waiting, Schopenhauer-like, to be voiced. Teeming with melody, ever grounded in harmony, it was music that both could not wait, yet must, until the abyss: the onset of the development section. Dark, rich strings and brings, offset by forest woodwind took us by the hand, grabbed us by the scruff of the neck: they did what was necessary, as did Schubert. Battle royal ensued, the intensity such as to have thoughts of Furtwängler well-nigh inescapable. Intimations of Wagner were doubtless not unrelated. In the recapitulation, all had been changed – forever. That is what happens when music, when music-making, matters. We had seen death, but this was no place to be maudlin, for we had looked it, ‘whatever ‘it’ may be, in the face. The coda’s grave beauty told us all we needed to know. Balance and progression were felt, experienced in the second movement. Its debts to Haydn were rendered lovingly clear: rusticity, yes, but also method, a method that helped render Schubert’s farsighted Romanticism all the more remarkable and poignant, not least in woodwind solos and string responses. It was perhaps, though, the transitions that told us most, not least those that might have seemed ‘mere’ silence on the page. Fernhören, then, as Furtwängler would have put it, but also Fernspielen.

Martha Argerich joined the orchestra for Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. These players, Barenboim too, have a lengthy and distinguished track record in Tchaikovsky’s music, which showed in the assured swagger of the opening, to which those piano chords were the only possible response. The depth of tone on which Argerich could draw, and did, was as remarkable as ever, likewise the variety of meaningful articulation. Her soulful skittishness rubbed off on the woodwind, and vice versa, so much of what we heard chamber music writ large. Lest all we heard seem a little too Mendelssohnian, there were Schumannesque reverie, muscle too, and backbone: this was a piano tigress of surpassing versatility, with double octaves that would have had Liszt himself sit up. I am no friend of applause between movements, but could readily have forgiven it here. There was none; instead, a good few audience members elected to chatter during the pizzicato opening to the second movement. Insofar as I could tell, it sounded lovely. A fine balance was struck, at any rate, between subsequent simplicity and complexity (not least but certainly not only metrical). There was little doubt where the finale was heading, urgent without a hint of the hard-driven, like the final flow of a mighty river and the human life gathered on its banks. For this was a performance full of delightful incident, first to be savoured, then fondly recalled. As an encore, Barenboim and Argerich treated us to a few minutes of decidedly superior domesticity: the Schubert A major Rondo, D 951, its lengths above all heavenly, Barenboim’s closing trill to die for.

A Concerto for Orchestra makes excellent sense as repertoire for a youth orchestra. The young players certainly seemed to relish the challenges of Lutosławski’s, in this splendidly vivid performance. Foreboding was in the air of the opening: foreboding that perhaps already had a sense of something beyond, a possible destination, Barenboim hearing and communicating form and possibilities, horizontal and vertical, as vividly as he had that of the Schubert symphony. Bartók’s spirit was present, of course; how could it not be? Prokofiev’s too, probably. These, however, were welcome guests at the feast, unease always present enough to prevent any folkloric elements from cloying. Scurrying and slide-slipping, the second movement again brought Prokofiev to mind. Fantasy and obstinacy were held in excellent balance, such as could only have resulted from playing of considerable excellence. Barenboim captured to a tee the decidedly post-war mood of the finale’s passacaglia section: Zimmermann as much as Shostakovich, though that is not in any straightforward sense to ascribe ‘influence’. Likewise the toccata, whose fantastical qualities – colour, rhythm, harmony – again brought Prokofiev to the fore, perhaps above all in a cacophonous passage that might almost have come from The Fiery Angel, or Le Pas d’acier. It was Bartók who emerged most clearly in the closing chorale section, yet with space and clarity that enabled us to hear difference as well as similarity. If the finale still sounded a little drawn out to me, that is doubtless my problem; I cannot recall a performance that made greater sense of it.

Semenchuk/Skigin - Glinka and Tchaikovsky, 1 April 2019

Wigmore Hall

Glinka: A Farewell to St Petersburg

Tchaikovsky: A tear trembles; To forget so soon; The fires in the rooms were already out; None but the lonely heart; It was in early spring; The fearful moment; Frenzied nights; Death; We sat together; Whether the day reigns

Ekaterina Semenchuk (mezzo-soprano)

Semyon Skigin (piano)

To the Wigmore Hall for an evening of magnificently old-school vocal performance from Ekaterina Semenchuk. It was very much her evening, rather than that of her pianist, Semyon Skigin, though he had his moments, especially earlier on. Anna Netrebko and her husband, Yusif Eyvazov, were amongst the enthusiastic audience for songs by Glinka and Tchaikovsky, with a series of encores that unleashed operatic tendencies never much veiled, Offenbach’s ‘Ah! quel diner je viens de faire’ (La périchole) and Carmen’s Habanera both revealing excellent French (also heard recently in Paris’s new Troyens), a soulful rendition of one of Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs in between.

That this was to be a recital in the grand manner was apparent from the very first of the twelve songs that make up Glinka’s collection, A Farewell to St Petersburg, ‘Romance from David Riccioi’. Semenchuk’s performance smiled without fashionable lightness, not so far from Verdi – though I find this unpretentious salon music considerably more to my taste. There was stage delivery too, the assumption if not of character than of persona. Skigin conveyed well the dance rhythms of songs such as ‘Bolero’ and ‘Barcarole’, leaving the way clear for Semenchuk’s star quality to engage beyond that. In the former, there were some splendidly darkened colours in her lower range, indicative of what might be achieved on a larger stage, without merely being of it here. A simple yet touching ‘Cavatina’ likewise hinted at that other musical world, whilst the contrasting stanzas of ‘Lullaby’ made almost for a scena in themselves; likewise, in different yet related fashion, the high drama of the ‘Fantasia’. The motoric humour of the preceding ‘Travelling song’ (‘Poputnaya pesnya’) even went so far as to receive an encore. Three songs in succession, ‘A knight’s song’, ‘The lark’, and ‘To Molly’, seemed almost to summarise the collection as a whole: respectively, aptly martial, and on a grand scale; delicate, yet spotlit; and beautifully shaped, with touching sincerity. The final ‘Song of farewell’ rounded things off with a resolve as un-Mahlerian as could be imagined: ‘Der Abschied’ this is not – and was not. This may not be ‘great’ music, but Semenchuk more than held our attention, drawing out of it more than one might ever have expected, without turning it into something that it was not.

‘A tear trembles’, the fourth song from Tchaikovsky’s op.6 collection, registered a different compositional voice entirely – which yet had roots in what had gone before. Semenchuk’s change of gown during the interval suggested something graver, less of the salon – and that is what we heard, her velvet tone and legato just the ticket. A richly wistful ‘To forget so soon’ offered both continuation and individuality, at times once again hinting at the operatic world of Eugene Onegin. The succeeding song, ‘The fires in the rooms were already out’, offered a fine example of building from hushed tones to climax, whilst the well-known ‘None but the lonely heart’, again from Tchaikovsky’s op.6, was relished as if an old favourite brought out by popular demand from the piano stool. (From the stool, though, certainly not off the peg.) ‘It was in early spring’ sounded duly vernal, ‘The fearful moment’ another fine example of opening in the salon and broadening out. Each of these songs brought something different to an enjoyable and revealing reictal, ‘Whether the day reigns’, op.47 no.6, an exultant, even grandiloquent finale.

Iolanta and L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Royal Academy of Music, 18 March 2019

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Images: Robert Workman

Iolanta – Samantha Quillish

Brigitta – Emilie Cavallo

Laura – Yuki Akimoto

Marta – Leila Zanette

Vaudémont – Shengzhi Ren

Alméric – Joseph Buckmaster

Robert – Sung Kyu Choi

Ibn-Hakia – Darwin Leonard Prakash

Bertrand – Niall Anderson

King René – Thomas Bennett

L’enfant – Olivia Warburton

La princesse, La chauve-souris – Alexandra Oomens

Le feu, Le rossignol – Lina Dambrauskaitė

La théière, Le rainette, Le petit vieillard – Ryan Williams

Maman – Tabitha Reyonolds

La tasse chinoise, La libellulue – Hannah Poulsom

La bergère, Une pastourelle, La chouette – Aimée Fisk

La chatte, L’écureuil – Gabrielė Kupšytė

L’horloge comtoise, Le chat – James Geidt

Le fauteuil, L’arbre – Will Pate

Oliver Platt (director)
Alison Cummins (designs)

Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Emma Brunton (movement and puppetry)

Royal Academy Opera Chorus and Sinfonia

Gareth Hancock (conductor)

Tchaikovsky’s one-act Iolanta seems to have gained in popularity recently. London, at any rate, has two different productions this year: this, at the Royal Academy of Music, and at Holland Park this summer. As ever, the question with a one-act opera is what, if anything, to pair it with. (That hardly applies with Salome or Elektra, though couplings have been known, but it will generally do so with shorter works.) Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges is a popular choice, and rightly so, from the one-act stable. Without much – although not without any – in the way of overt connection being made, the two operas complemented each other nicely, both proving excellent showcases for their young singers, both proving substantially more than that too.

Oliver Platt, one of our most accomplished young directors – last year, I saw two (!) fine productions of Così fan tutte (here and here) – once again offers us stagings both intelligent and involving. Like their hero(ine)s, they take their own paths, yet where those paths intersect, the results are thoughtful and intriguing. Iolanta seems to me greatly misunderstood – or at least too often mostly understood in a way that limits rather than sets it free. The subtext seems obvious – a blind girl, kept safe by her father, eventually freed from her imprisonment by a stranger – and yet, too often ignored. Here, it certainly is not, a greenhouse, a place of hothouse care and incarceration, placed firmly on stage, its flourishing yet stifled plants both inspiring and warning, could Iolanta but see them. Likewise the surgical gloves of her companions, weirdly static in aestheticised presentiment of Maeterlinck and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. But when, finally she can see, finally she can become – in the eyes of men, in the eyes of society more generally – a ‘woman’, Iolanta turns suddenly away from the sun’s blinding rays, from adulthood. It is too late: orchestra and chorus have rejoiced, she gives out a cry of anguish, but no one cares – other, perhaps than us, in the audience. Now she is on her own, awakened, seeing; or rather, captive once again, this time without the alleged protection and solace of childhood.

The boy in L’Enfant et les sortilèges – a trouser role, naturally, in this most elegantly queer of operas – is on his own too; or is he? This is certainly an opera very much about childhood, an irredeemably adult idea, rather than a children’s opera. And so there is, or should be, always something enticing and yet disturbing about that penetration of an imagined child’s lair, here very much centred upon the imaginings of his bedroom. Here, the constructivism of our imagination, that of the work’s creators, most likely that of the ‘child’ too, is put centre stage. We see, lightly worn, the workings: puppetry, other short-trouser children, books, fabrics, a tent from his – our? – own life, creating a world that is, yes, imagined, but also equally his, Ravel’s, Colette’s, our own. It is never predictable, always with an element of the dream, of the unconscious, yet one can hazard a guess where it has come from, at least in retrospect. We are all psychoanalysts now, are we not? And when the Princess emerges, from the tent in the garden – here, as in Iolanta, a place of magical enticement, which may or may not be quite what it seems – she is dressed as Iolanta was. Will the boy do to her what the earlier princess’s prince charming was set to do to her? Most probably: not, however, quite yet, for childhood, whatever that might be, and its enchantments, its gifts, still reign. Light and dark take a related, yet different path. At least, we believe so…

These are not in any way easy operas for students, however accomplished, to perform. The young musicians of the Royal Academy acquitted themselves very well indeed. Without repeating the cast list, I should like to mention a handful of singers who stood out for me. All, however, performed creditably, whether individually or as a company. Samantha Quillish’s Iolanta was heartfelt, moving, possessed both of heft and subtlety: everything, at least, anyone could reasonably have asked. Shengzhi Ren’s Vaudémont proved honest, ardent, again moving: just what the Tchaikovsky brothers wanted, allowing us, should we wish, to question their assumptions whilst affording them the dignity of being taken seriously. Thomas Bennett’s King René grew in strength and compassion as the evening progressed, whilst Sung Kyu Choi’s Robert offered quite a taste of what might have been, had characters’ choices been different. Olivia Warburton’s Child (L’Enfant) impressed in every possible way: her French, her demeanour, her elegance of line. This was a character, both ‘real’ and constructed, in whom one could believe, ably supported and abetted by a near faultless cast.

It was perhaps inevitable that the orchestra, conducted by Gareth Hancock, would sometimes fall a little short. Orchestras twice its size will find these tough nuts to crack, let alone together. There was much to savour, though, and if I sometimes missed the flexibility of the finest Tchaikovsky performances, that was hardly the point here. Hancock supported his singers with skill and care, permitting them, like those flowers in the greenhouse and the garden, to bloom as they would. As to what happens next, we shall see – and hear.