Eugene Onegin review — no frills Tchaikovsky goes straight to the heart
When Dominic Dromgoole, who ran Shakespeare's Globe from 2006 to 2016, was asked to direct Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin for the first time, he knew he didn't want to make it fiddly. And opera these days tends towards the fiddly. Dromgoole, though, tells us in the programme for this excellent touring production by Wild Arts that he 'just wants life to be life, and plays to be plays, and operas to be operas'. He adds: 'It's almost impossible now to go and see a play that is just itself, that hasn't been 'versioned' by somebody or other.'
This Onegin succeeds because it is direct, simple, heartfelt. All harder goals to achieve than they sound. It's also something of a bravura exercise in plate-spinning. At this premiere in the barn at Layer Marney Tower in Essex, given as part of the Essex Opera Festival, Orlando Jopling conducted a band of five strings, four winds and one horn, who achieved minor miracles in sustaining Tchaikovsky's plangent lyricism, yet still rose to the boisterous exuberance of the dances.
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The cast multitask too, forming the choruses themselves, getting nifty in the dances or arranging the spartan set with a gravitas that creates atmosphere in a small but meaningful way. Costuming adds its own story: Sion Goronwy's appealing Gremin is a military hero on crutches — unlike the ennui-ridden Onegin, he has actually done something with his life.
It all meshes tightly with a story that's about repression; big emotions hemmed in by a small, petty world. 'Contentment is as good as love' is the sad motto disingenuously adopted by Hannah Sandison's excellent Madame Larina, volatile and even flirtatious (the character is often the blowsy, mumsy type). It's one of several good lines from a thoughtful English translation by Siofra Dromgoole (Dominic's daughter), nearly all of which carries straight to the audience, some just a few feet away.
Onegin tartly tells Tatyana to 'practise some restraint'. There are moments here that are perhaps too restrained, when you want things to boil as well as simmer. Xavier Hetherington's callow Lensky and Emily Hodkinson's enigmatic Olga don't always punch out. But Dromgoole draws out sometimes agonising intensity from the central couple's doomed entanglement. Gleamingly sung, Galina Averina's Tatyana is at her best by the final scene. Conversely, by that point Timothy Nelson's once haughty Onegin is a wreck who's realised just how badly he's screwed up. That's life. That's opera.★★★★☆165minLayer Marney Tower, Essex to Jun 21; touring to Sep 18, wildarts.org.uk
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