AN AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA

EUGENE ONEGIN

 

Music by Tchaikovsky,

 story from a novel by Alexandr Pushkin,

 production by the New York Metropolitan Opera,

 screened at the Lighthouse Cinema, Oamaru,

 watched by the usual small group of Opera lovers.

 

Act One: a farm in the Russian countryside owned by the widowed mother of two teen age daughters. Olga and Tatiana. They are celebrating the harvest with vigorous country dances, songs and games..

 

Enter the 'Boy next door', Lenski with his city friend Eugene Onegin. Lenski is in love with Olga while Tatiana is enraptured by Eugene, who is bored by all the country revelry. Tatiana writes a love letter to Onegin which he returns and tells her that she is a delightful girl, but he is not interested.

 

Act Two: Tatiana's birthday party begins with a quadrille. Lenski and Onegin arrive. Tatiana is flustered. Onegin is bored, and just for the fun of annoying his friend Lenski. Onegin flirts with Olga.

Scene 2 is very dramatic, pistols at dawn and Lenski dies, Onegin has to flee Russia. (Good Riddance!)

 

Act three: St Petersburg The ballet is upper class ballroom  Tatiana has grown up and married a Prince, a lovely urbane man, the only person in St Petersburg society who does not cut Onegin dead;
Of course when he sees Tatiana in sumptuous clothes, decked in jewels on the arm of a real prince he realises that she is the real love of his life.
Too late! The meet on the riverbank in a snow storm and she tells him to get lost. Great singing but he gets what he deserves. Eugene Onegin is a supercilious, social climbing twit.

But the music is great.

Now I must download the novel and read it.











 

 

 

 

 

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