Alexander Pushkin’s profoundly human, hopelessly romantic, ultimately devastating story is elevated by Tchaikovsky’s richly layered and unabashedly expressive music.
Mariusz Kwiecien as Eugene Onegin and Ana Maria Martinez asTatiana Photo: Todd Rosenberg Photography
TCHAIKOVSKY: Eugene Onegin
Sunday 27 October 2019 at 6.00pm on RNZ Concert
Cast:
Marius Kwiecien (Onegin), Ana Maria Martinez (Tatyana), Charles Castronovo (Lensky), Alis Kolosova (Olga), Dmitry Belosselskiy (Prince Gremin), Katharine Goeldner (Mme Larina), Jill Grove (Filipyevna), Chicago Lyric Opera Chorus & Orchestra conducted by Alejo Pérez
Recorded in the Lyric Opera House, Chicago by WFMT
Eugene Onegin is an intensely passionate drama set to some of opera’s most sweeping, soulful, and heart-stoppingly beautiful music.
Tatiana is a lovesick country girl, and Onegin is the sophisticated young man who callously spurns her love before realising, too late, what a mistake he’s made.
Ana Maria Martinez in Eugene Onegin at Chicago Lyric Opera Photo: Todd Rosenberg Photography
The Story:
In 1820's Russian, an impressionable country girl, Tatiana, falls in love at first sight with her new neighbour, the debonair and bored Onegin. She writes him a letter explaining her feelings, which he rejects politely but firmly. At a party he flirts with Tatiana’s sister Olga, whose fiancé is the poet Lensky, Onegin’s good friend.
Alisa Kolosova & Charles Castronovo in Eugene Onegin at Chicago Lyric Opera Photo: Todd Rosenberg Photography
Onegin is challenged by the jealous Lensky to a duel, in which Lensky is killed.
After several years of travelling abroad, Onegin returns to St. Petersburg and sees Tatiana at a ball. She is now the wife of the much older Prince Gremin. Onegin realizes he loves Tatiana and writes her a passionate letter. When she receives him at her home, she admits that she still loves him. Rather than running away with him, however, she chooses to remain with her husband, leaving Onegin in despair.
