Why does Eugene Onegin, the famed opera of the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, endure? It’s a curious thing. It certainly wasn’t the work that the composer was most proud of – his opera about Joan of Arc, for one, written in the wake of Eugene Onegin’s success, was more ambitious and closer to his heart, but never resonated as strongly.
In fact, in his 25-year career in the 19th century, Tchaikovsky wrote 11 operas and only two are regularly performed – this and Queen of Spades. Queen of Spades has a great story going for it – following a woman who sells her soul to the devil to win a game of cards, and the man obsessed with uncovering her secret. Eugene Onegin, on the other hand, does not – the tale of a self-involved and unlikable hero who spurns the love of a young woman only to regret it later.
Tchaikovsky recognised this problem the moment that the idea of adapting Alexander Pushkin’s novel of the same name was brought to him by a famous opera singer in May 1877. He thought the strength of the novel was in the beauty of how it was written, not in its plot, and stayed up all night stressing over it until he had an epiphany on how to do it. What would make it work, above all, was emotional sincerity.
It's difficult not to speculate that this may have had something to do with Tchaikovsky’s personal life. He was 37 at the time, and that same year, he married his former student Antonio Miliukova, a disastrous partnership. Nine years earlier, he had nearly married someone else – the Belgian soprano Desiree Artot – but it ended before it really began. The composer later said that she was the only woman he ever loved. Quite a similar emotional circumstance to Eugene Onegin’s, wouldn’t you say?
There have been countless stagings of Eugene Onegin around the world, many of which play with the dreamlike nature of the story – with most of the action taken only in the character’s minds, finding inspiration more in what they want their lives to be than in what they actually are.
The staging that’s on in the UAE at the moment, showing on Friday at Dubai Opera, is by the Czech Republic’s National Theatre Brno. The music is stirringly performed, the costuming is impeccable and the use of light and colour is often breathtaking. Interestingly, unlike others in recent years, it’s not Eugene's (Ales Jenis) mind we find ourselves getting lost in, it’s his love interest Tatyana (Linad Ballova).
In this version, it’s the long scene set in Tatyana’s bedroom the night after she meets Eugene that is most transcendent, as she grapples with her love. When she sleeps, her bed soars through the air and maidens populate the stage to echo her sentiments in chorus. And, thankfully, the English translation above the screen captures the beauty of Pushkin’s words that Tchaikovsky was careful to stay faithful to – beauty that matches the music, some of the best of the composer’s career.
Eugene is as contemptible as ever. It’s only in his final sequence, as he grapples with the stupidity of his indifference and the crushing consequences of his past actions that his performance transcends – this is the emotional sincerity that Tchaikovsky built the work around, and part of the reason it will continue to be staged for centuries to come.
Eugene Onegin will be performed at Dubai Opera on Friday
