The first night of Northern Ireland Opera’s Eugene Onegin was also the Last Night of the Proms. I was happy to skip Land of Hope and Glory to be honest to see a live, at times moving, version of Tchaikovsky’s 1897 strangely modern opera. It deals with human love, loss, psychology, the imbalance between the sexes when it comes to the tender emotion. Director Cameron Menzies has had an intriguing idea, of framing the opera with an old wheelchair bound lady, presumably the heroine Tatyana, recalling her youth. It works for a while, with the lady holding a childish balloon but soon becomes rather laboured. We didn’t need her remembrance of things past in the intense second act scenes between Onegin and younger Tanya. The “mists of memory” referenced by the director in his programme note were maybe just too misty.
The plot is super dramatic, based on Pushkin’s classic published as a serialised ‘verse novel’ in the 1820s. It deals with our eponymous hero, or anti-hero, and his encounter with a young well born neighbour in the country. She is smitten with this tall stranger, close friend of her sister’s beau, the poet Lensky.
So far, so Jane Austen, but what’s different is the Russian intensity. Tatyana declares her love unthinkable for the period in a letter delivered by her nanny’s grandson. Then comes the let down when the man sings in effect the brush off aria. Yuriy Yurchuk, one of the best baritones around whose trademark role this is, delivered it with the right amount of scorn and maybe a bit of genuine concern for the young lady’s honour. For example Vocally, he was good. Mary McCabe’s Tatyana swooned prettily, got upset and illustrated the illness model of love prevalent in the nineteenth century. She sang with commitment.,
When we got to the duel, and sadly our poet doesn’t make it to the end of the opera, Norman Reinhardt shone. He was the best singer and Kuda Kuda was brilliantly delivered in his liquid tenor voice.
The chorus outdid themselves, so too members of the Orchestra of Northern Ireland under conductor Dominic Limburg and Carolyn Dobbin’s Larina was a star turn. What the opera did was make one reflect on the different rules for men and women, also the privilege and arrogance of the Russian aristocratic class. It was Chekovian in a way and Menzies did good work adding moves in for the peasantry, who danced, acted with masks and some of whom acted as carers to our elderly observer.
Overall, we got the sweep of emotion and the production looked fine with an interesting set by Niall McKeever. It resembled a bare set with elegant chairs scattered around as if at the end of an era, which was clever. The lighting was institutional, the old woman is after all in a home or hospital, but we gained images of the countryside projected onto the walls as if recalling happier times.
An interesting night in the Grand Opera House with Royals in the house -the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester – and one to think about.
Jane Hardy
