Welsh National Opera |
| Welsh National Opera- Eugene Onegin , New Theatre Cardiff , June 22, 2004 |
| This review first appeared in the New Welsh Review, Summer 2004 The Welsh National Opera will present a veritable Russian operatic cycle over the next few years. Highly appropriate, you may say, with the strikingly young new Russian musical director Tugan Sokhiev at the helm. Such a repertoire has been comparatively rare in the last two decades and will include one utter rarity, Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa, along with a revival of the inspired Richard Jones production of his theatrical masterpiece The Queen of Spades and David Pountney’s fine interpretation of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. A more frequent visitor to Wales and WNO’s touring circuit has been Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, James Macdonald’s new production being the third in just over twenty years. Andrei Serban’s outstanding ’80s conception was replaced by a clear but problematic version by Howard Davies in the ’90s. This latest incarnation shares both the latter’s clarity and, for different reasons, its problems. If Queen of Spades is the zenith of the composer’s operatic oeuvre, it is equally no wonder that the accessibly ageless Onegin is a more enduring popular success, encapsulating as it does both the breathtaking lilting beauty of his ballet music and the darker-veined beauty of the often anguished symphonies. Byronically Romantic in its anti-Romanticism and its emotionally brittle and bitter conclusion and one of the most intensely lyrical of all music dramas, Tchaikovsky indeed called it, not an opera but lyric scenes in three acts, partly writing the libretto from Pushkin’s verse novel himself. Eugene Onegin depicts Tatyana’s thwarted love for Onegin and its eventual reversal, and the production flows elegantly and poignantly, like a river. Or it should. And that is the fundamental problem with Macdonald’s production. Lengthened by an always extraneous second interval, longish scene-changes – two in the first act, one each in the other two – make it positively cumbersome. Of course, this used to be the way, certainly at Covent Garden. In fact, there were celebrated Zeffirelli productions in which changes of entire sets, not merely scenes, were interminable. Eventually objections to such longeurs grew until they were outlawed. Zeffirellli, though, was always a film-maker in waiting and subsequently a film-maker and his settings were stunning. Now, theatrically, he is as concise as Peter Brook. At the WNO, this changing set hardly justified a resurrection of such antiquated ritual, although the costumes, designed by Tobias Hoheisel, were superbly evocative. The depiction of Onegin as, initially, an icily Ibsenian character is good, although I am not convinced that Tatyana would have fallen for quite such a cold fish. Ibsen’s Brand after all, has, as the name implies, palpable fire. In his sister Martha’s recent film of Pushkin’s Onegin, Ralph Fiennes, himself a consummate Brand, has extraordinary fire. Vladimir Moroz, hampered perhaps by the sepulchral mien imposed upon him by the production, sang strongly but somehow drily and ultimately soullessly, leaving one eager for that sexy, prematurely cold world-weary cynicism that Thomas Allen was able to convey so well in his day. Even when he is finally desperate for Tatyana – what a gift of a scenario – he remained unmoving. Of all the changes, an insistence on a 15-minute resetting for the final scene made life unnecessarily difficult for Moroz and Amanda Roocroft’s Tatyana. Roocroft, always a charismatic performer, convincingly portrayed a young girl’s fresh-faced and, in this work, rapid progression from love-lorn rejection to making her own unshakeable decisions, enhanced and complemented by Hoheisel’s beautiful costumes. If Die Zauberfloete is above all, Pamina’s show, then Onegin is certainly Tatyana’s, and Roocroft was affecting, particularly in the pivotal ‘Letter Scene’. However, a ringing, glowing brightness of voice somewhat eluded her. As Olga, the very different and less morose sister, Ekaterina Semenchuk, a very satisfying Russian import, was excellent. Marius Brenciu, however, as her doomed fiance Lensky, already damned by a ludicrous wig and moustache, was unremarkable. However, amidst the scene-changing, there was nevertheless some effortless scene-stealing. By far the best singing of the night was by Brindley Sherratt as Prince Gremin. Onegin’s cousin and friend and, to his chagrin, Tatyana’s new and much older husband, Gremin only appears briefly in the last act, but Sherratt’s sonorous bass shook the house and soothed it and, my word, did it respond. WNO stalwart Suzanne Murphy and multi-faceted stalwart Linda Ormiston acted nicely as, respectively, Madame Larina and Filipyevna, and the redoubtable chorus sang and danced well to the inventive choreography of Stuart Hopps. A stronger show would have better graced a season which sustains revivals of WNO’s oldest extant production and one of its greatest, Hertz’s Madama Butterfly and Richard Jones’s quirkily brilliant and touching Hansel and Gretel. Still, the orchestra played wonderfully and – this is the important point – responsively to Tugan Sokhiev’s baton, and that bodes well for the future of Russian and, hopefully, other opera in Wales. |
Reviewed by: Dewi Savage |
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