#i love my state subsidized opera houses where the tickets are actually affordable

[lenskij]

The worst Onegin I’ve ever seen

The Royal Swedish Opera, 2018. Director: Vasily Barkhatov

The picture above is the poster photo for the production. It shows what would happen if I ever meet the director responsible for it.

That’s also the duel.

Yes.

THE DUEL WAS A FISTFIGHT.

How did Lensky die, you ask? Oh, Eugene punched him and Lensky fell on top of a pile of logs (which luckily for the tenor were made of pillows) and died. And after the most emotionally devastating lines in the opera (”Is he dead?” “He’s dead”) the audience GIGGLED.

Mr. Director, sir, THAT’S NOT THE REACTION THE DUEL SCENE IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE. Sir, YOU MADE THE AUDIENCE LAUGH AT LENSKY’S DEATH! Sir, please tell me that wasn’t the reaction you were aiming for! Sir!!

I often say that Eugene Onegin is a comedy BUT THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT. 

Look, I found a picture! *screams* I hate this so so much!

(Also that man in the pink dress and top hat is Triquet. Yes, they turned him into a man-in-a-dress joke... Bad.)

Act 3 was terrible too! I couldn’t find a picture of the set, so her’s a blurry screenshot from the trailer (the text says “indescribably sad” which YES that’s exactly how I feel about this!)

What’s happening in act 3, you wonder? Oh, it’s just the Gremins having a reception AT A TRAIN STATION. What??? Who on EARTH would host a reception at a train station? With random people walking about - well, they’ve closed off the area with a rope but still?? Wth??? And yes, one of the random people walking past the reception was our dear Eugene, who spotted Tatiana there.

I mean, a train station works well as a metaphor, y’know, as a symbol for Change and whatnot, except it felt more like a eyesore and/or punch in the face than a storytelling device. URGH.

And the final scene: the party has cleared out, and only Eugene and Tatiana was on stage. Tatiana had a suitcase, she was on her way to presumably catch a train with Gremin or whatever, and Eugene was begging her to stay. They eventually ended up fighting over the suitcase?? While singing about their pain and feelings?? To me, Tatiana didn’t feel conflicted at all about rejecting Eugene, which goes against what the music is telling us.

In general, I’m not against transforming an opera into a new setting. However these types of productions often seem to make something new just for the sake of novelty. This was definitely the case - this made a mess of Onegin instead of retelling the story. I remember I actually liked the first act, though unfortunately the memory is overshadowed by how much I hated the second and third acts. The setting had the vibes of the 20s or 30s, which we all know from Russian history was Not A Good Time for the aristocracy. Onegin is very much a story about the aristocracy (which is one of the reasons why it’s very difficult to move it into more modern times, where the aristocracy isn’t the same class as it was in the 19th century). And so, this setting could have worked: the Larins’ house had signs of past glamour, but now was laid bare, and the Larin women were trying to adjust to this new life. “Habit is given to us from above in place of happiness” - they would get used to that, eventually. The idealist Lensky fits here well, too: he’s a poet striving for a beautiful ideal that no longer exists. The dialogue between past and present is a theme I’ve seen in other productions of Onegin as well, because it does work really well with the story. 

This production, however, fell apart at the duel. It’s a pivotal point at the story - even if the main conflict is between Eugene and Tatiana, Lensky’s death is vital in defining Eugene’s arc, and if it’s done wrong, it messes everything up. It’s a completely different thing if Eugene killed Lensky intentionally, in cold blood, than if it was an accident. The duel is another key factor why it’s difficult to move Onegin from its original setting: there just isn’t any modern equivalent of duels, that have so clear-cut deadly and predetermined consequences. Boys still fight over girls, of course, but they can no longer challenge their rivals to a duel. If they did, they’d appear comical, and the rival wouldn’t lose any honor in declining. If the director’s intention was to make Lensky appear laughable, he very much succeeded. It’s another theme I’ve seen before: Lensky’s dreamy idealism is silly in the cold real world, reality has no place for poetry or beauty. However, Tchaikovsky’s music demands us to take Lensky seriously, and accept his pain as genuine. I can see where the director was coming from, but that’s not what Tchaikovsky wrote the music for. The contrast of the audience giggling & Tchaikovsky’s sorrowful notes was jarring. Again, if that was the intended effect, it’s brilliantly executed (I still hate it, though). Same thing with the third act: Eugene appeared as a pathetic loser begging for Tatiana’s love, which could have worked, were it not for the music. The stage and the music were telling different stories. Now that I’m thinking about it, I start to suspect that was intentional too, which would turn the entire production from an objectively terrible mess into something I just personally hate. (When I write a review I always try to separate my personal preferences from objective truth, but we all know it’s a difficult task).

There is no correct way to make an adaptation of Pushkin’s Onegin. The themes of the novel are eternal and universal - you can present them in a myriad of different ways and make it work. However, if you make an adaptation of Tchaikovky’s Onegin, you need to match the emotions in the music. Tchaikovsky interpreted the story in a certain way, and even if music alone isn’t as strict as stage direction, it still contains emotions you can’t separate from it. And when your story doesn’t fit the music, the entire play falls apart.

Maybe that’s why I hated this so much - it could have worked, but the director’s story was in conflict with Tchaikovsky’s music. The setting makes sense with the story, but not with the music. It could have been a brilliant play... It could, it could, it could...

But instead, we got this.