Andrii Kymach: Eugene Onegin; Lauren Fagan: Tatyana; Evan LeRoy Johnson: Lensky; Megan Marino: Olga; Emily Treigle: Filipyevna; Dimitry Ivashchenko: Gremin; Krisztina Szabó: Madame Larina; Michael Colvin: Monsieur Triquet. COC Orchestra, Speranza Scappucci, Conductor; Peter McClintock, Revival Director. Four Seasons Centre, Toronto. Continues until May 24, 2025; tickets here.
When the Canadian Opera Company acquired and revived Robert Carsen’s 1997 Met production of Eugene Onegin for its 2018 season, most reviews praised it for standing the test of time. The same production, directed by Peter McClintock, has popped up in a few other North Amerian opera houses, where reactions have been more mixed, especially from those lamenting Carsen’s excising of any visual clues to the opera’s Russian setting.
There’s definitely something to be said there. Had I not known that the production goes back nearly 30 years, I would have taken that deletion as a symptom of post-Ukraine-war derussification campaigns. Clearly there was a different agenda. For better or for worse?
The Production
Instead of Russian landscapes and aristocratic interiors, the setting is a three-wall ‘box’ with strikingly spare panels, lit up by colours that reflect not only the times of the day and the passage of time, but also the overall mood of the protagonists. There is plenty of melancholy to be read in the bright autumnal orange of the first scene, echoed by the leaves covering the stage and falling from the ceiling.
This accords with Carsen’s conception of the opera as a ‘memory piece’, starting, as it were, from the end. During the orchestral prelude, therefore, we see, behind the scrim, the rejected Onegin browsing through Tatyana’s letter from six years previously. The petals falling from the pages on to the floor soon turn to autumn leaves falling from the skies. This highly effective opening was somewhat undercut on the first night night by ensemble issues between orchestra and chorus (a problem not confined to this scene alone).
Performances vs Production Design
Similarly, the shadowy grey in the final scene reflects the starkness of Tatyana and Onegin’s doomed final encounter. The chemistry between Andrii Kymach, a deeply resonant Onegin, and Lauren Fagan, a sensitive but somewhat under-powered Tatyana, was at its most touching here, though hardly in the same league as the breathtaking Dmitry Hvorostovsky and Renée Fleming in the same production in 2007. Kymach’s final railing against his ‘pitiable fate’ was heartrending, but Fagan’s sigh of ‘Alas’, before confessing to her continuing love, paled besides Fleming’s devastating cry.
Elsewhere, the vast emptiness of the scenic background, leaving the vertical space unused, and much of the horizontal, too, makes the characters seem small and distant. Like a memory?
That’s one of Carsen’s many ideas that work better on paper than on stage. According to his printed notes, he wanted to convey the story as Pushkin does, through the gaze of the prematurely cynical Onegin, rather than that of the young naïve heroine.
Unfortunately, the greater part of the opera doesn’t easily lend itself to this concept, particularly when its dramatic evolution is frequently interrupted by curtains and a ‘Pause, please remain seated’ sign. Given that the décor largely consists of single items of furniture, it is hard to understand the need for such lengthy, distracting breaks.
By contrast, where there is a need for a pause in between the fateful duel between Onegin and his once close friend, Lensky, and the ballroom scene, Carsen perversely opts for seamless continuity. This is all the more frustrating as it follows a particularly well-crafted duel scene, enacted entirely behind the scrim, in pre-dawn hues, and with an outstandingly poignant delivery of Lensky’s aria from Evan LeRoy Johnson. Following the gunshot and Lensky’s fall, Onegin approaches the body, pauses, and the light changes. Unmoved, he steps forward, waiting for his servants to clean and dress him, all this set against the entirety of the Polonaise (played without dancers).
Whatever the intent, it misfires, the more so because Onegin’s next lines remind the audience that he has been travelling for the past six years. This inflicts serious damage on what we would otherwise infer of Onegin’s character arc and humanisation process, since it suggests that it is only Tatyana’s new-found sophistication and status that spark his conversion.
The Music
All that aside, it takes more than such dubious interventions to prevent anyone from falling in love with Tchaikovsky’s opera time and time again, especially given such sympathetic performances.
Megan Marino’s Olga was delightfully carefree and bubbly in acting, warm and velvety in voice, and Dimitry Ivashchenko’s Gremin was the epitome of nobility and grace. Fagan, in her first time tackling the role, responded movingly to the mood-swings of the Letter Scene, even if her voice doesn’t have the soaring quality for its peaks of exaltation. Michael Colvin’s sarcastically comical Triquet was an almost spitting-image of the orange-haired street singer in Visconti’s Death in Venice.
Final Thoughts
Lavish costumes created a counter-balance to the austere setting, making the characters pop out as if in a greeting card. Under Speranza Scappucci’s sometimes over-enthusiastic direction, the orchestra took a while to settle; hopefully they will deal with ensemble and balance problems for the next performances.
Whether this production has had its day and is ripe for full retirement remains to be seen. For now it can still draw a full house. But it is Tchaikovsky’s supremely humane music that brings the house down.
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