The central plot of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin — the novel in verse which Tchaikovsky used for his 1879 opera — concerns the eponymous character’s brusque dismissal of a young maiden’s passionate and starry-eyed advancement. His rejection leaves the maiden — named Tatyana — in a world of pain. Time goes on; things change. Onegin then falls madly in love with her. He even pens a passionate letter in the same kind of soul-spewing state that Tatyana once found herself in many moons ago. But Onegin’s out of luck. What was once a possibility is no longer one. Onegin has been slapped hard in the face by reality. It’s brutal stuff. Yet who among us will go through life unscathed by a plight similar to Onegin’s? Probably not many. And so it seems Tchaikovsky was quite sensible in wanting to bring Pushkin’s work onto the stage.
Since its premiere in 1879, Tchaikovsky’s lyric opera has been performed countless times. A production by Komische Oper Berlin, in 2016, is one of the latest. Its set design and lighting is both gorgeous and effectively used; its cast is talented, energetic, and convincing; and a handful of scenes are fantastically poignant. Yet for all that — or rather precisely because of it — viewing this fine production bolstered a guilty feeling of mine: Eugene Onegin, the poem (in its full splendor), simply does not translate all that well onto the stage. Some elements do — and perhaps that’s all that matters — but just as many elements do not.
The problem, in my opinion, is that Pushkin’s poem is far too delicately wrought and subtly playful. Consequently, some of its spirit is exceedingly difficult to capture on stage. The narrator of the poem, for example, is wonderfully detailed in his observations, not to mention lively, humorous, idiosyncratic, and shrewd. Indeed, he not only tells of his subjects’ tribulations concerning love, but intermingles those plot threads with caustic commentary on the culture, politics, and literary trends of his day. How does a director convey this is an opera?
There’s no disputing that the love plot between Onegin and Tatyna can be wonderfully conveyed on stage. But these elements, despite their power and entertainment, are far from the only things that make Pushkin’s poem the brilliant and multi-layered work that it is. Consequently, when viewing an opera of Eugene Onegin, it can feel like viewing only a sliver of Pushkin’s work — a sliver, moreover, that is often devoid of the poem’s beautiful textures and nuances.
Pushkin’s masterpiece of Russian literature is a notoriously difficult work to translate. This fact tells you something about the quality, nature, and brilliance of the poem. It’s so much more than its plot, even though its plot is alluring and glues things together.
If you open a translation of Eugene Onegin and read even just a few pages, you can get a sense for the kind of magical bravura that Pushkin managed to pen on every page of his eight-chapter work. The narrator, as mentioned, is so stunningly articulate and entertaining, even when discoursing on matters seemingly quite mundane. It’s his voice, his perspective, his inimitable style which gives the work its exquisite poetic construction and unique, hard-to-put-your-finger-on kind of tone. Productions of Eugene Onegin that I’ve seen aren’t able to capture all that much of these qualities (not too surprisingly) — and as a result, I’ve found performances of Eugene Onegin to feel like a limited and somewhat bizarre experience.
But, alas, onto the production by Komische Oper Berlin. Directed by Barrie Kosky, it struck me as a visually stunning production. Everything from lighting, custom design, and set design wonderfully conveyed, both directly and indirectly, the shifting demeanors and emotions which characterize the transformations of the play’s main characters. There’s also a simple yet wonderful lusciousness that pervades much of the play, not least in the opening act, where Tatyana and Olga sport a light blue and a bright pink dress, respectively, which are set against the brilliant green grass, the black dresses of their mother and Filippyevna, and a slight fog which lingers in the distance.
Lighting also is used very effectively in a long scene in Act I, where an exasperated Tatayna — alone on stage — tries to make sense of her powerful feelings towards Onegin. At one point, poor Tatyana is lying in the grass, with a circle of light around her, while everything else is pitch black. We can sense her despair, helplessness, confusion; it’s an individual experiencing the most human of emotions in the context of a gigantic, unfeeling cosmos. What a scary predicament to be in — and one that’s superbly performed by Asmik Grigorian.
There’s much else to find immensely satisfying about this production. While I still think Pushkin’s work is a wildly difficult piece of art to get from text to stage, this is a fun, engrossing, and visually-seductive production. Readers (and viewers) of Pushkin’s story often sympathize with some of its characters considerably more than others. Truth be told, however, there’s probably a bit of Onegin, Tatyana, Lenksy, and Olga in all of us.
Spectatio 