Opera · Russian & Slavic opera

Eugene Onegin

29 March 1879, Maly Theatre, Moscow (Conservatory students)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky · libretto by the composer and Konstantin Shilovsky, after Pushkin

Tchaikovsky called it "lyric scenes", not an opera: seven episodes from Pushkin's verse novel about a bored dandy who coldly refuses a country girl's love letter, flirts with her sister to spite a friend, kills that friend in a duel, and years later begs the same woman — now a princess — to run away with him, and is refused.

How to spot them

▸Provincial Russia in the 1820s: a jam-making terrace, a name-day ball, a snowy mill, a St Petersburg palace
▸A soprano writes a letter all night and gives it to her nurse at dawn
▸A duel at dawn between two friends over nothing at all
▸The two great set-piece dances are a waltz and a polonaise
▸Lensky is a tenor, Tatyana a soprano, the title role a baritone, Prince Gremin a bass

Arias & moments — listen

A girl stays up all night writing a letter she will regret, and hands it to her nurse at dawn (1879)

The Letter Scene — Tchaikovsky composed it first, before anything else in the opera

Recording: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

"Kuda, kuda vy udalilis" — a poet says goodbye to his golden days on the morning of a duel (1879)

Lensky's aria, the most famous Russian tenor solo

A blaze of St Petersburg ceremonial opens the last act, and is now a concert piece in its own right (1879)

The Polonaise, Act 3

"Lyubvi vse vozrasty pokorny" — an old general tells the man who scorned her how she has changed his life (1879)

Prince Gremin's aria: 'love is no respecter of age'

A fatuous Frenchman recites couplets at a name-day party, and is applauded (1879)

Monsieur Triquet's couplets, sung during the Act 2 ball

"A happiness was once so near, so possible" — a princess sends a man away and shuts the door (1879)

The final scene: Tatyana admits she still loves him and refuses him anyway

Quick-fire facts

•The source is Alexander Pushkin's verse novel of 1825–32; Tchaikovsky subtitled his version 'Lyric scenes in three acts'.
•It was first performed by students of the Moscow Conservatory at the Maly Theatre in March 1879, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein; the Bolshoi took it up in 1881.
•Tchaikovsky wrote the Letter Scene first, and while doing so received a love letter from a former student, Antonina Milyukova, whom he then married with catastrophic results.
•Lensky, a poet, is shot dead by Onegin in a duel over a trivial flirtation — as Pushkin himself was killed in a duel in 1837.
•Tatyana's elderly nurse is Filippyevna; her sister is Olga, a contralto, and Lensky's fiancée.
•The Waltz belongs to the Act 2 name-day ball; the Polonaise opens Act 3 in St Petersburg.
•Prince Gremin, the general Tatyana marries, has the opera's great bass aria.
•Tchaikovsky's other Pushkin opera is The Queen of Spades (1890).

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Sources

Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il'yich: Yevgeny Onegin
Encyclopaedia Britannica — Eugene Onegin: opera by Tchaikovsky
Gustav Kobbé, ed. the Earl of Harewood and Antony Peattie — The New Kobbé's Opera Book