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Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Times
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. • Read more theatre reviews, guides and interviews 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, Follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews
The Hindu
04-06-2025
- General
- The Hindu
Daily Quiz: On annual events taking place in June
Daily Quiz: On annual events taking place in June Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit YOUR SCORE 0 /5 RETAKE THE QUIZ 1 / 5 | Why is Pride Month observed in June? DID YOU KNOW THE ANSWER? YES NO Answer : June became recognized as Pride Month in the United States to commemorate the Stonewall Uprising. SHOW ANSWER 2 / 5 | This day is observed on June 3 every year. The day is also associated with promoting a healthy lifestyle. It was first celebrated in 2018. The resolution for the day recognizes 'the uniqueness, longevity and versatility of this device, which has been in use for two centuries, and that it is a simple, affordable, reliable, clean and environmentally fit sustainable means of transport. Which is the day? DID YOU KNOW THE ANSWER? YES NO Answer : World Bicycle Day SHOW ANSWER 3 / 5 | This is celebrated annually on June 5 and encourages awareness and action for the protection of this entity. It was first established for the first time by the UN in 1972. What is the day? DID YOU KNOW THE ANSWER? YES NO Answer : World Environment Day SHOW ANSWER 4 / 5 | This language day is observed annually on June 6. The event was established by UNESCO in 2010. The day coincides with the birthday of this language poet. The poet is known for his work Eugene Onegin, among other works. Which is the day? DID YOU KNOW THE ANSWER? YES NO Answer : Russian Language Day SHOW ANSWER
New York Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How ‘The Queen of Spades' Brought Two Tchaikovsky Brothers Together
In 1888, Modest Tchaikovsky wrote a letter to his brother Pyotr, the composer. Modest, a former law student and budding dramatist and critic, had recently been commissioned by the Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg, Russia, to write his first opera libretto: an adaptation of Pushkin's 'The Queen of Spades.' Modest revered his older brother's talent and international renown. He had already proposed potential collaborations to Pyotr twice, to no avail. He had a composer lined up for 'The Queen of Spades,' Nikolai Klenovsky, but he was disheartened that he and his brother would not be working on it together. Pyotr's response to the letter was measured but blunt. 'Forgive me, Modya, but I do not regret at all that I will not write 'The Queen of Spades,'' adding: 'I will write an opera only if a plot comes along that can deeply warm me up. A plot like 'The Queen of Spades' does not move me, and I could only write mediocrely.' Then Klenovsky dropped 'The Queen of Spades.' Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the director of the imperial theaters, asked Pyotr to take over. He agreed. And so 'The Queen of Spades,' which returns to the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, became the first collaboration between the two Tchaikovsky brothers, men of different disciplines and artistic abilities, despite their closeness. This work was the culmination of nearly 40 years of Modest's attempt to escape the cool of Pyotr's shadow and bask in his light. The result, the musicologist Richard Taruskin wrote, was the 'first and probably the greatest masterpiece of musical surrealism.' It's a testament to their camaraderie and fraternity, as well as their openness and intimacy. When stripped to its thematic core, Pushkin's 'The Queen of Spades,' first published in 1834, has all the makings of spectacle — obsession, greed, madness, phantasmagoria — that you could also find in sentimental Italian operas of the 19th century. Pushkin was not just god of Russian letters, but the god, yet his writing wasn't easy to adapt into a libretto. His storytelling is anecdotal and ironic, lacking in empathy and tenderness for and between its characters. No one evolves, and there are no changes of heart. And 'The Queen of Spades' is short; Taruskin counts the text at 'barely 10,000 words.' If there was anyone for the job, it was Pyotr. About 10 years earlier, he pulled off adapting Pushkin with 'Eugene Onegin,' one of the most beloved works in all of Russian literature. And that was a case of spinning gold from straw: Pushkin's source material, while celebrated for its cynical commentary on high society and innovative use of prose, does not have a plot designed to necessarily sustain the attention of an opera audience. (For those reasons, Modest, when Pyotr shared his plans for 'Onegin' with him, was intensely critical. 'Let my opera be unstageable, let it have little action,' Pyotr retorted. 'I am enchanted by Pushkin's verse, and I write music to them because I am drawn to it. I am completely immersed in composing the opera.') Pyotr mostly adapted the text for 'Onegin' on his own. Any deficiencies in the libretto are compensated by his sonorous, impassioned score. You could say the same for 'The Queen of Spades.' Modest softened Pushkin's austerity without diluting the menace. Tchaikovsky's music, in turn, amplified the emotional stakes, drawing the listener into the characters' inner worlds. When Modest was brought on to write the libretto for 'The Queen of Spades,' recommended to Klenovsky by Vsevolozhsky, he was still in the process of paving his own artistic path. Unlike the prodigious Pyotr, Modest lacked tenacity and diligence, and often abandoned projects before finishing them. He tried his hand at law, fiction, criticism, translation and drama, with varying success. In his early career, Modest tried and failed to collaborate with Pyotr at least twice: once for the concert overture adapted from Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' in 1874, and again three years later for an opera based on Charles Nodier's 1837 novel 'Inès de las Sierras.' Pyotr rejected both while encouraging his brother's literary talent. The brothers wrote to each other often. Pyotr looked forward to Modest's letters, in part because he 'wrote them with the grace of Sévigné.' He wrote to Modest in 1874: 'Seriously, you have a literary vein, and I would be very happy if it were to beat so strongly that you became a writer. Maybe at least there will be a decent libretto one day.' Eventually, that 'decent libretto' came along with 'The Queen of Spades.' When Pyotr was brought on, Modest had already been working on it for over a year, under Vsevolozhsky's and Klenovsky's guidance. The world premiere was just a year away. Pyotr would write the score for 'Queen of Spades' abroad. He had temporarily relocated to Florence, Italy, as a creative reset. Modest remained in Russia. His libretto was workable but would need to be altered significantly to meet the composer's and director's demands. Story lines had to be shifted, characters added, its timeline moved to the previous century, during the reign of Catherine the Great. Often motivated by deadlines, Pyotr created a working score in only 44 days in a fit of spectacular inspiration. Their different working modes were exacerbated by their distance. Pyotr arrived in Florence with only the first scene of text. When he finished a scene, he sent it back and eagerly awaited a new scene by mail. Modest could not keep up with his brother's speed. Pyotr made adjustments to nearly every scene to fit the score, and on several occasions, he was unhappy with Modest's verses and provided the text himself, including for Lisa's Act I arioso 'Otkuda eti slyozy' and Prince Yeletsky's Act II aria 'Ya vas lyublyu.' How 'The Queen of Spades' was created is less a reflection of the Tchaikovsky brothers' differences in artistic approach than their similarities and proclivities. Although Modest had a twin brother, Anatoly, it was recorded that Pyotr and Modest, too, had identical qualities. The actor Yuri Yuriev, who mentioned Modest several times in his memoirs, once described him as 'Pyotr's double.' 'He was so similar in everything to his older brother,' Yuriev wrote. 'I am convinced that they thought, felt and perceived life exactly the same. Even their voices, manner of speaking were similar.' At face value, this characterization of fraternal resemblance is innocuous, perhaps obvious. Pyotr, too, was aware of their likeness. 'I would like to find in you the absence of at least one bad trait of my individuality, but I cannot,' he once wrote to Modest, years before their eventual collaboration. 'You are too much like me, and when I am angry with you, I am, in fact, angry with myself, for you are always playing the role of a mirror in which I see the reflection of all my weaknesses.' But Yuriev's comments could also be interpreted as a euphemism that hints at secrets hiding in plain sight. It has been suggested that among the reasons Pyotr and Modest became so close as adults — closer to each another than to any of their other three brothers — is that they both had homosexual propensities. The scholar Alexander Poznansky, whose biographies on the Tchaikovskys uncover previously censored letters from open publication, has meticulously laid out the many correspondences Pyotr wrote to Modest about his many trysts and feelings of limerence with other men: prostitutes, conservatory students, coachmen, manservants. Few letters betray Pyotr's shame or guilt. If anything, they are strikingly contemporary. In a footnote to one letter, Pyotr refers to a male prostitute with feminine pronouns, a custom that still exists, and that Poznansky writes was a habit among 19th-century men who would be described as gay today. Poznansky and Taruskin theorize about Modest's queerness as well in their writings, based on examinations of his unpublished memoirs archived at the Tchaikovsky State House-Museum in Kiln, Russia. These documents are not available to the public, and few other people have studied them. One that Taruskin has cited includes Modest's reaction to learning about Pyotr's sexuality from his twin brother: 'I am not a freak, I am not alone in my strange desires. I may find sympathy not merely with the pariahs among my comrades, but with Pyotr! With this discovery everything became different.' Modest's earlier contempt for himself, he wrote, 'changed into self-satisfaction, and pride to belong among the 'chosen.'' It is apt that the brothers' first collaboration was creating an opera based on a tale about the hoarding of a secret, one shared with only those 'chosen' to know. Despite his initial reservations about the subject, Pyotr warmed up to it. Two months into the process, he wrote to Modest that 'either I am terribly, unforgivably mistaken — or 'The Queen of Spades' will really be my chef d'oeuvre.'
San Francisco Chronicle
08-05-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Scrappy opera company Heartbeat thrives by reimagining the classics
NEW YORK (AP) — Dan Schlosberg remembers the day 11 years ago when his upstart opera company put on its first performance — in a yoga studio before an audience of 30 people. 'We did Kurt Weill's 'The Seven Deadly Sins' accompanied by an upright piano that we got for free on Craigslist and a violin,' recalled Schlosberg, the company's music director and one of its founders. They named their company Heartbeat Opera, 'from the idea that singers would be feet away from you,' Schlosberg said. 'And so you would be experiencing their voices at arm's length and that would make a resonance in your heart.' Today, in an era when many opera companies are struggling financially, Heartbeat appears to be thriving, with an annual budget that just passed $1 million. But true to its initial vision, the company still performs in small venues, most with a seating capacity of about 200. No small opera here 'Very few small companies take up the ambition to do the fullness of opera on a small scale,' said Jacob Ashworth, another founding member and Heartbeat's artistic director. 'We don't do small opera. We do big opera in a small space.' And despite its success with critics and audiences — performances regularly sell out — the company has deliberately maintained a modest schedule. There's typically an opera-themed drag show around Halloween and then two operas staged in New York City performance spaces in the winter and spring. Each work is condensed to 90-100 intermission-less minutes with new orchestrations that require just a few musicians. Marc Scorca, president and CEO of Opera America, thinks Heartbeat is smart not to expand too quickly — a mistake that has caused some small companies to collapse. 'Growth itself shouldn't be a goal. Excellence should be a goal,' he said. 'I always prefer companies to plan their trajectory as slow as possible so they don't overstretch and overstep.' Unlike some small companies, Heartbeat doesn't focus on new work or on bringing to light neglected old rarities. Instead, its website promises 'incisive adaptations and revelatory arrangements of classics, reimagining them for the here and now.' It's that reimagining that attracted Sara Holdren, a director, writer and teacher who first worked with the company on Bizet's 'Carmen' in 2017. 'Their approaches to the storytelling feel extremely of our world and about our world,' she said, 'without falling across that line into a sort of trite topicality where you say, 'Oh yes, I understand a relevant-with-a-capital-R political point is being made here'.' For Beethoven's 'Fidelio,' Heartbeat went to prisons and recorded the voices of incarcerated people, who appeared on video singing the Prisoners Chorus. For Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin,' the two main male characters became lovers, reflecting the composer's own sexuality. Salome in a pink skirt and sneakers And for Richard Strauss' 'Salome' this season, the teenage title character was dressed in a frilly pink skirt and sneakers; John the Baptist was imprisoned on stage in a cage with transparent sides instead of in an underground cistern; and during the Dance of the Seven Veils, it was a lascivious Herod who stripped off his clothes, not Salome. Heartbeat's casting for 'Salome' reflected the premium it places on theatrical values in addition to vocal ability. Baritone Nathaniel Sullivan, who portrayed John the Baptist, recalled that 'a big part of the audition was just straight acting. And in the rehearsals, there was a real focus on the storytelling. 'I haven't experienced that in a lot of other opera companies to that extent,' he said. Soprano Summer Hassan, who was cast as Salome, admits she was nervous at first 'because I had never done a role like this where I am the title character. 'I was really doubting myself, thinking how do I make this girl look so young?' she said. 'And they said, your physicality will do that on your own. Make her look confident and you will make her look like a confident child. They gave me the tools to figure out it was within me.' Perhaps the most striking aspect of this 'Salome' was the re-orchestration by Schlosberg. Instead of more than 100 players as called for in the original, he took a cue from the opening notes on a clarinet and scored the piece for eight clarinetists (who also played other instruments) and two percussionists. Heartbeat's final local offering of the season will be Gounod's 'Faust,' to run at the Baruch Performing Arts Center from May 13-25. The devil made her do it 'I had mentioned to Jacob that I really love devil stories,' said Holdren, who is directing the production. 'And I was fascinated with the idea of taking something so big and so weighed down with history and assumptions and seeing how much we could crack it open and blow the dust off.' She sees Mephistopheles less as a 'mustache-twirling villain' and more as 'a figure of hunger and loneliness slipping into the vacuums that human beings create when they are so desperate or disgusted with life that there's an opening for him.' Her production will be set in contemporary times, sung in French but with new English-language dialogue, and it will make heavy use of shadow puppetry. It's the first Heartbeat offering for which Schlosberg has not done the re-orchestration. That task fell to Francisco Ladrón de Guevara, a Mexican violinist and composer who has scored the opera for seven musicians, most of whom play two instruments, including Ashworth, who will play violin and mandolin and also conduct. Taking Heartbeat Opera on the road Schlosberg will be back doing the arranging for a rare Heartbeat foray outside the city this summer. The company has been invited to stage a revised version of Samuel Barber's 'Vanessa' at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. 'I'm really excited by what they've been doing, particularly in reimagining the classics for contemporary times," said Raphael Picciarelli, co-managing director of the festival. For Heartbeat's debut in Williamstown, the festival is setting up a new performance space that should make the company feel right at home. It's in an abandoned grocery store, and there will be seats for just over 200 people.
Winnipeg Free Press
08-05-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
Scrappy opera company Heartbeat thrives by reimagining the classics
NEW YORK (AP) — Dan Schlosberg remembers the day 11 years ago when his upstart opera company put on its first performance — in a yoga studio before an audience of 30 people. 'We did Kurt Weill's 'The Seven Deadly Sins' accompanied by an upright piano that we got for free on Craigslist and a violin,' recalled Schlosberg, the company's music director and one of its founders. They named their company Heartbeat Opera, 'from the idea that singers would be feet away from you,' Schlosberg said. 'And so you would be experiencing their voices at arm's length and that would make a resonance in your heart.' Today, in an era when many opera companies are struggling financially, Heartbeat appears to be thriving, with an annual budget that just passed $1 million. But true to its initial vision, the company still performs in small venues, most with a seating capacity of about 200. No small opera here 'Very few small companies take up the ambition to do the fullness of opera on a small scale,' said Jacob Ashworth, another founding member and Heartbeat's artistic director. 'We don't do small opera. We do big opera in a small space.' And despite its success with critics and audiences — performances regularly sell out — the company has deliberately maintained a modest schedule. There's typically an opera-themed drag show around Halloween and then two operas staged in New York City performance spaces in the winter and spring. Each work is condensed to 90-100 intermission-less minutes with new orchestrations that require just a few musicians. Marc Scorca, president and CEO of Opera America, thinks Heartbeat is smart not to expand too quickly — a mistake that has caused some small companies to collapse. 'Growth itself shouldn't be a goal. Excellence should be a goal,' he said. 'I always prefer companies to plan their trajectory as slow as possible so they don't overstretch and overstep.' Unlike some small companies, Heartbeat doesn't focus on new work or on bringing to light neglected old rarities. Instead, its website promises 'incisive adaptations and revelatory arrangements of classics, reimagining them for the here and now.' It's that reimagining that attracted Sara Holdren, a director, writer and teacher who first worked with the company on Bizet's 'Carmen' in 2017. 'Their approaches to the storytelling feel extremely of our world and about our world,' she said, 'without falling across that line into a sort of trite topicality where you say, 'Oh yes, I understand a relevant-with-a-capital-R political point is being made here'.' For Beethoven's 'Fidelio,' Heartbeat went to prisons and recorded the voices of incarcerated people, who appeared on video singing the Prisoners Chorus. For Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin,' the two main male characters became lovers, reflecting the composer's own sexuality. Salome in a pink skirt and sneakers And for Richard Strauss' 'Salome' this season, the teenage title character was dressed in a frilly pink skirt and sneakers; John the Baptist was imprisoned on stage in a cage with transparent sides instead of in an underground cistern; and during the Dance of the Seven Veils, it was a lascivious Herod who stripped off his clothes, not Salome. Heartbeat's casting for 'Salome' reflected the premium it places on theatrical values in addition to vocal ability. Baritone Nathaniel Sullivan, who portrayed John the Baptist, recalled that 'a big part of the audition was just straight acting. And in the rehearsals, there was a real focus on the storytelling. 'I haven't experienced that in a lot of other opera companies to that extent,' he said. Soprano Summer Hassan, who was cast as Salome, admits she was nervous at first 'because I had never done a role like this where I am the title character. 'I was really doubting myself, thinking how do I make this girl look so young?' she said. 'And they said, your physicality will do that on your own. Make her look confident and you will make her look like a confident child. They gave me the tools to figure out it was within me.' Perhaps the most striking aspect of this 'Salome' was the re-orchestration by Schlosberg. Instead of more than 100 players as called for in the original, he took a cue from the opening notes on a clarinet and scored the piece for eight clarinetists (who also played other instruments) and two percussionists. Heartbeat's final local offering of the season will be Gounod's 'Faust,' to run at the Baruch Performing Arts Center from May 13-25. The devil made her do it 'I had mentioned to Jacob that I really love devil stories,' said Holdren, who is directing the production. 'And I was fascinated with the idea of taking something so big and so weighed down with history and assumptions and seeing how much we could crack it open and blow the dust off.' She sees Mephistopheles less as a 'mustache-twirling villain' and more as 'a figure of hunger and loneliness slipping into the vacuums that human beings create when they are so desperate or disgusted with life that there's an opening for him.' Her production will be set in contemporary times, sung in French but with new English-language dialogue, and it will make heavy use of shadow puppetry. It's the first Heartbeat offering for which Schlosberg has not done the re-orchestration. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. That task fell to Francisco Ladrón de Guevara, a Mexican violinist and composer who has scored the opera for seven musicians, most of whom play two instruments, including Ashworth, who will play violin and mandolin and also conduct. Taking Heartbeat Opera on the road Schlosberg will be back doing the arranging for a rare Heartbeat foray outside the city this summer. The company has been invited to stage a revised version of Samuel Barber's 'Vanessa' at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. 'I'm really excited by what they've been doing, particularly in reimagining the classics for contemporary times,' said Raphael Picciarelli, co-managing director of the festival. For Heartbeat's debut in Williamstown, the festival is setting up a new performance space that should make the company feel right at home. It's in an abandoned grocery store, and there will be seats for just over 200 people.
