Lyrical scenes by Peter Tchaikovsky
At a party in the countryside, the young, dreamy Tatyana falls in love with the sophisticated Eugene Onegin and confesses her feelings to him in one of the most touching love letters in opera literature – feelings that he is unable to reciprocate. Soon afterwards, Onegin kills his best friend Lensky in a duel, leaves and sinks even deeper into the meaningless emptiness of his existence. When he sees Tatyana again years later, much has changed...
From the verse novel Eugene Onegin, with which Alexander Pushkin published a key work of Russian literature in 1833, Tchaikovsky created a new type of opera characterized by realism: premiered in Moscow in 1879, the opera was soon celebrated on the great stages of Russia, Europe, and eventually the whole world. It is “full of warm feeling and poetry and skillful in every detail,” praised colleague Antonín Dvořák: “In short, this music is captivating and penetrates so deeply into our hearts that we can never forget it.” As an English-trained director, Olivia Fuchs attaches particular importance to telling good stories: such as this one – always moving anew – of a missed love.
