Opera at its best is total theatre, with the audience’s eyes, ears, emotions and intelligence fully engaged. And this was one of those productions, 3_ hours that fairly flew by and left me emotionally drained and exhilarated at the same time.
The two people who emerged most triumphantly from it were Tchaikovsky, whose music is richly magnificent and Pushkin, whose original verse novel provides a firm foundation for the drama, even with the changes of emphasis the composer made. Indeed the division of the opera into seven self-contained scenes gave the impression of pictorial verses.
An announcement that Nuccia Focile was suffering from a bad sore throat but would still sing the role of Tatyana did make the audience fear the worst. Well I hope she hasn’t aggravated her condition by her performance, but that performance was utterly stunning. She grew from being a convincing love struck adolescent through to an equally convincing mature married woman. In her teenage phase she had to pour all her passions into the long composition of a letter, the first scene Tchaikovsky wrote for the opera and the one into which he poured all his own passion. This intensely demanding passage must have exposed any weakness in the voice and there was not the slightest quiver to be heard.
Rodion Pogossov was excellent as the largely unsympathetic object of her affections. His Onegin was stiff and formal in the first act, crassly insensitive in the second, leading to the killing of his best friend in a duel, and repentant in the third, by which time it was too late. He sang powerfully and had great presence.
The other star of the evening, as so often, was the WNO chorus, who were not only called upon to be three very different sets of people, but to dance as well as sing. Their Russian peasantry was perfection, their local country gentry highly enjoyable and their St Petersburg nobility utterly sublime. Their elaborate polonaise was probably the highlight of Stuart Hopps’ excellent choreography.
The production had a very Russian feel. Alexander Polianichko’s conducting was sensitive to all the music’s shifting moods. The orchestral playing was wonderful, romantic with dark underpinnings and deliciously lively for the dances. Sets, costume designs and lighting conjured the various Russian scenes and moods with eerie stylised exactness. The direction, originally by James Macdonald with this revival by Caroline Chaney, kept a tight focus on the emotional turmoils of the main characters, with an almost electric connection between them.
This really was another great production by Welsh National Opera, one of those evenings that will firmly lodge in my memory and my emotions.
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