Eugene Onegin at Seattle Opera

Once again, I almost didn’t go to the opera. I was on a deadline and hadn’t been feeling well all weekend. A finished draft and a nap sounded better than getting dressed and leaving the house. But I had never seen a Russian opera before, and I knew I liked Tchaikovsky’s music, and Sunday was the only day I could possibly go. So I dragged myself to McCaw Hall and thoroughly enjoyed every one of the 190-some minutes of the matinee performance; then couldn’t fall asleep that night for thinking about Eugene Onegin.

The Music

I already knew I loved Tchaikovsky’s music. But all I knew about Tchaikovsky came from his ballets. The Nutcracker Suite and Swan Lake are two of just a handful of classical music pieces I can hum from memory. I didn’t really know what to expect from his operas, but I expected it to be good.

And it was so good. I had read that Russian operas really emphasize the chorus, and that worried me a little bit. I generally find the huge choruses that close out acts to be more loud than interesting. But Tchaikovsky even made the choruses not just interesting, but also pretty.

The music in Eugene Onegin is every bit as beautiful and sublime as the bel canto canon I already love. But unlike bel canto, it comes without a hint of the misogyny and crazy sauce I usually have to look past to appreciate it. (Crazy sauce can be fun. But a good story is better.)

The Story

Eugene Onegin is a very good story. Based on the novel in verse of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, it’s not at all what you expect from opera. Pushkin is basically Russia’s answer to Shakespeare. But where Shakespeare reveled in the kind of melodramatic, coincidence-laden plots beloved by opera, Pushkin foreshadowed modernism with three-dimensional characters and plausible events.

Teenage passion is fine, but I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of what might have happened had Romeo and Juliet survived. What choices would they have made after hormones subsided? How would they lived with the results of their rashness? Eugene Onegin is not a direct corollary to R&J, but it feels like the story as might have really happened.

It’s not surprising that Pushkin’s story is a classic. What is surprising is that it works so well as an opera when nearly every soapy dramatic turn is muted by characters who maintain self-control and act according to their places in society.

Generally speaking, theater (especially opera) is either a comedy or a tragedy. You know which one you’re watching because comedies end with a wedding and tragedies end when a lover dies. In Eugene Onegin, the protagonists do not marry (at least, not each other) nor do they die.

Instead of one of the traditional love story arcs, we get a collection of scenes in three acts. The first and third acts are mirror images. In the first, Eugene and Tatyana meet; she falls in love with him, and he rejects her. In the third, they meet again; he falls in love with her, and she rejects him. It’s one of the most delicious instances of poetic justice in literature, overwhelming whatever investment the audience may have in their feelings for each other.

These two acts bookend the scenes that lead to the pair’s separation – a quarrel between friends that ends in a duel.

Bromance and Other Unconventionalities

Much has been made of the fact that Tchaikovsky was gay, and that his own loveless, catastrophic marriage took place during the same period in which he wrote the opera. A lot of critics apply gay stereotypes to his music.

In the pre-opera lecture, UW language professor Claudia Jensen made a pretty strong argument that Tchaikovsky’s personal situation was not a major factor in his characterization of Eugene and Tatyana’s failed romance. Tchaikovsky was composing during the Romantic period, but Eugene Onegin is kind of an anti-romance – reason and experience contain the swells of passion, and love does not conquer all.

That said, could a straight composer have crafted the second act? From a plot perspective, it’s just an excuse to separate the lovers so they can meet again years later. But it’s a nutshell that contains the emotional heart of the story, a true romantic tragedy.

Eugene Onegin is an utter cad, but the poet Lensky, engaged to Tatyana’s sister Olga, is his true friend. Convinced he’s too good for the countryside, Eugene has already alienated the locals when Lensky drags him to a ball in the first scene. Bored and cranky, he starts flirting with Olga to needle Lensky – petty revenge for his own ill humor. Lensky overreacts and ends up challenging Eugene to a duel.

Sort of a Scene Spoiler

(I’m describing this scene in detail so skip it if you’re a stickler. But I don’t think any word count could spoil the impact of seeing it live.)

The next day, both of them visibly regret the argument but pride keeps them both from backing down. As they take up their pistols, Lensky offers his hand, and Eugene almost doesn’t take it. After hesitating too long, he takes Lensky’s hand and uses it to pull him into a tearful embrace.

Toxic masculinity will not be denied, however, and the duel goes on as planned. And so beautifully staged, too, where the audience can see Eugene’s face but not Lensky’s. Eugene is shot in the arm and is back up in an instant, just in time to see Lensky fall face down, dead. Forgetting his own wound, he rushes to the body and sobs over his friend with the same raw intensity as Ewan McGregor holding Nicole Kidman at the end of Moulin Rouge.

via GIPHY

Lensky’s death felt like the true, Romeo-and-Juliet, where-the-hell-are-the-adults-they-should-be-stopping-this tragedy of the story.

Reader, I cried. A fucking stage duel made me cry.  

Cast Against Type

The plot wasn’t the only place Eugene Onegin departed from opera tropes. You know the old saw, “Opera is where a tenor and a soprano want to make love but the baritone won’t let them”? Not this time. It starts in the very first scene when the sisters are introduced. Like my own two daughters, there’s a “twittering bird” extrovert who literally skips through life looking for the next entertainment, Olga. And there’s the shy, still-waters bookworm whose buried feelings constantly threaten to overwhelm her, Tatyana.

You’d expect a high, light soprano like Madison Leonard to be Olga. But she’s a mezzo. The aptly named Melody Wilson has a voice like caramel, so rich and deep the people sitting behind me referred to her as a contralto. It’s a beautiful match for her tenor fiancé.

That’s right, the hero’s best friend is the tenor. The hero is the baritone. It’s not unheard of for protagonist to be a baritone – especially a bad guy main character like Don Giovanni – but it’s definitely not the default. And the bass is usually an evil old man with designs against the heroine. But Prince Gremin, while older, is the man Tatyana marries. By all measures, she traded up. (Even her own – although she admits she still has feelings for Onegin at the end, those feelings are not strong enough to make her choose him over her husband.)

The female lead as a soprano is standard. But this lead is no ingenue, even if she is young and inexperienced. She has intelligence and strength of character that usually calls for a mezzo. Even as a soprano, Marina Costa-Jackson’s Tatyana had a strong, powerful voice that reminded me of Mary Elizabeth Williams’ Tosca.

I didn’t even realize how bored I was by character types represented by voice types until I heard something different in Eugene Onegin.  

The Performances

Maybe it’s because I was sitting in the second row this time (bad for viewing supertitles, great for singers’ facial expressions) or maybe it was director Tomer Zvulun, but I really noticed the acting in this production.

Barihunk Michael Adams is really good at playing obnoxious men. He has a beautiful voice, but Eugene Onegin doesn’t really get any great arias (what with mostly having no deep feelings to sing about). Physical characteristics like flaring his nostrils and flashing a cheesy grin before speaking made his character feel like a particular Eugene rather than a character type, even as he perfectly embodies the entitled, shallow, handsome and he knows it character.

Marina Costa-Jackson was in the same production of Cosi fan Tutte as Adams, but this was the first time I’ve seen her. Ginger was Carmen; Miriam was an evil stepsister. Now I’ve finally seen all three Costa-Jackson sisters! Like her sisters, Marina is as much an actress as a singer. Her Tatyana’s drooping head and habit of covering her mouth conveyed so much emotion. Bookish, introverted Tatyana is possibly the first opera character I have ever personally identified with.

Her letter-writing aria takes up a whole scene and is the musical centerpiece of the entire opera. To Costa-Jackson’s credit, you never once think of technique during the scene, but are only swept up in her adolescent passion. Yet the cynicism and dignity with which she meets Onegin again as an adult felt equally true.

I’ve seen Colin Ainsworth once before, in Flying Dutchman. He was a great visual actor then, too, but didn’t really have a lot to do vocally. In Eugene Onegin he gets a big aria in the second act. On the morning of his duel with Onegin, he sings of his doubts and regrets. It’s one of the more affecting pieces of music in the opera, and the only one that sounded familiar to me.

I’ve already mentioned Melody Wilson’s rich mezzo. But she also had a powerful eye roll and some all-too-familiar fed up with her sister faces. I was sad that she never appeared after the party in the second act. I really wanted to see how her character developed after her fiancee’s death.

Despite my preference for low voices, I rarely paid much attention to basses when I started going to the opera because they usually only have a few booming lines. But in the last few years I’ve gotten to hear some basses actually sing, and Prince Gremin’s aria in the third act when he talks about his marriage to Tatyana is one of the best examples. Bass David Leigh overcame my aversion to age-gap romances, convincing me that Tatyana was better off. He also had me crushing invisible oranges in my seat with a cavernous low note held impossibly long. It felt like the end of the aria, but with a short intake of breath he gave it one last push, even lower than before and I was like “Baritones, who?”

Like the poem in Splendor in the Grass, Eugene Onegin is a lot about dealing with real life after the passions of youth fade, which may be why the small parts of the mother and the nurse are so engaging. I guess it says where I fall in the timeline, that Madame Larina’s (Margaret Gawrysiak, who was hilarious in Barber) lines about real life never measuring up to books resonated so strongly. The scene-stealing nurse (Meredith Arwady) is a direct descendant of nurses from Shakespeare and equally charming.

Monsieur Triquet was a humorous role that seemed a little out of place in an opera that was too Russian to be funny. But Martin Bakari (who made a character of a bit part in Porgy & Bess) made a delightfully self-important Frenchman.

Details

Music by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky
Libretto by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky and Konstantin S. Shilovsky
In Russian with English captions
Premiere: Maly Theatre, Moscow, Russia, March 19, 1879
Previous Seattle Opera Performances: 1975, 1986, 2002
Marion Oliver McCaw Hall
Performances: Jan. 11, 12, 15, 18, 19, 22, 24, & 25, 2020

Tickets are available online.

Approximate Running Time: 3 hours, 10 minutes including two intermissions. It was the shortest 3 hours I’ve ever spent in a theater. Only the intermissions felt long.

The Cast

Where roles alternate, the performer I saw is presented in bold font.

Eugene Onegin
John Moore (Jan. 11, 15, 19, & 25)
Michael Adams (Jan. 12, 18, 22, & 24)

Tatyana
Marjukka Tepponen (Jan. 11, 15, 19, & 25)
Marina Costa-Jackson (Jan. 12, 18, 22, & 24)

Lensky  
Colin Ainsworth

Olga
Melody Wilson*

Nurse Filipievna 
Meredith Arwady*

Madame Larina 
Margaret Gawrysiak

Prince Gremin
David Leigh*

Monsieur Triquet
Martin Bakari

Zaretsky/A Captain
Misha Myznikov

Conductor
Aleksandar Marković*     

Production Stage Director
Tomer Zvulun

Associate Director
Stephanie Havey            

Scenic Designer
Erhard Rom

Costume Designer
Isabella Bywater

Lighting Designer 
Robert Wierzel

Chorusmaster    
John Keene

English Captions  
Jeremy Sortore

* Company Debut

{I attended this performance of Eugene Onegin courtesy of my daughter, who used her Teen Tix membership to buy 2 for $10 seats.}