Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin (Belfast, 2024)
NI Opera, 2024
Dominic Limburg, Cameron Menzies, Yuriy Yurchuk, Mary McCabe, Norman Reinhardt, Sarah Richmond, Carolyn Dobbin, Jenny Bourke, Aaron O'Hare, Niall Anderson, Matthew Jeffrey, Seamus Brady, Anne Flanagan, Adam Ashford, Gerard Headley, Alice Johnston, Maeve McGreevy, Sean O'Neill, Mira Renilheiro, Emma Scott
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 17th September 2024
I know I have complained in the past about the Northern Ireland Opera programme being reduced to one fully staged opera a year, but if you are going to do one opera and have already got the usual suspects of Italian opera out of the way (La Bohème, La Traviata, Tosca), now is the time to be a little more adventurous. If you want to introduce the Belfast audience to a glorious work that will still please those who will be less familiar with the opera world (and one opera a year doesn't provide much opportunity), then with a little nod to the glamour of Bridgerton, Downton Abbey and the currently popularity of TV costume dramas to give the audience something familiar to latch onto, you can't do much better than Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin.
Taking on a great Russian opera however can't have been an easy decision when the more obvious route would have been Carmen or a Mozart opera, all the more so considering the current ambivalence towards some Russian artists due to the war in Ukraine. A Russian opera however brings it own artistic challenge for a relatively young opera company, singers and orchestra, not least in choosing to present the opera in the original Russian, but Eugene Onegin is worth it, the opera having all the elements to engage an audience in a heartfelt emotional, romantic and human drama. And so it proves to be in its short run of four performances at the Grand Opera House in Belfast. If not quite hitting the full range and dynamic of the work, NI Opera under the direction of Cameron Menzies delivered an impressive account of an exceptionally beautiful work that has all the deep personal engagement of the composer poured into every note.
Incredibly, aside from the role of Onegin, most the other main roles were taken by local artists and there were few weaknesses of any significance in the singing. That's quite an achievement. Usually a more mature singer, preferably of Russian or East European origin, is required for the role of Tatyana, so it's all the more astonishing that a young Northern Irish singer with limited experience of leading soprano roles can handle the demands of the role so impressively. A little more depth to the voice would add to the character, but since the larger part of the opera features Tatyana as a young and inexperienced young woman, Mary McCabe is able to make her character much more convincing. That pays dividends for the opera's final scene when the older Tatyana is assailed by doubts on her re-encounter with Onegin, her assurance crumbling as she reverts back to the emotions and circumstances of her younger self that shaped her life. It's a faultless singing performance, perhaps only let down by a lack of clear direction.
There have been many ways of bringing out the reflective nature of Tatyana’s life experience, her journey from a naive young woman in the country to a mature lady of elegance and outward assurance who nevertheless holds searing memories and past regrets. It's not unusual to see other productions relying on doubles - actors or dancers - to bridge the scope of her enthusiastic youthful bookish idealism into mature acceptance of duty and routine. And indeed, Menzies method of bringing this element out of the opera is to view the events as the revisiting of the past by an elderly lady in a wheelchair in the present day. She remains onstage almost throughout, at least in all the scenes where Tatyana appears, which suggests that it is Tatyana herself. Although she engages with her younger self on one or two occasions, it's hard however to reconcile the time discrepancy between the two periods.
More than that however, it's really not enough to bring the fullness and richness of the emotional range required here, or the complexity of the misplaced or mistimed feelings that exist in the Tatyana/Onegin relationship. Ukrainian baritone Yuriy Yurchuk sang Onegin well, but the direction here also didn't allow much space to explore the character. In the first part of the opera Onegin is somewhat arrogant, aloof and detached, in his relationship with Lensky he is apparently oblivious of any fault - although it's true that Lensky here appears to be unreasonably jealous to the minor social indiscretion of Onegin dancing with his partner - and in the final scenes all his character seems to have precipitously dissolved into him becoming a figure of regret, disappointment and disillusionment, seeking to find a way out of it by trying to return to the past.
These are challenges that exist in the opera itself, which Tchaikovsky envisioned as seven fairly austere scenes based on Pushkin's verse novel rather than an opera with a cohesive dramatic flow. Nonetheless, what is elided is alluded to and given weight in the huge emotional undercurrent of the music score, and a production can make use of other means to bring those elements out. Set in what looks like an abandoned warehouse of concrete blocks, on one hand the director adheres to the intended austerity of the piece, the costume drama taking place within this environment highlighting the romantic ideal of the elderly woman viewing it from the sidelines. With projection on the back wall of the changing conditions of the seasons contributing to a sense of this being more of an emotional and mental representation than a physical environment, it does succeed in finding it own way of presenting the conflict of romance and tragedy, the painful memories lived afresh within the opera. Just not strongly or convincingly enough for the deeper complexities of the work.
By any standard however, the musical and singing performances gave an impressive account of the work. Aside from the two main leads, Norman Reinhardt’s rather Italianate Lensky was strong and emotionally charged. As Olga, Sarah Richmond was as ever excellent, but again without the direction sufficiently differentiating her nature from her sister Tatyana. Carolyn Dobbin was a strong Madame Larina, making an great impression particularly in her first scene and Jenny Bourke was a sympathetic Filipevna. Well done to Aaron O’Hare for a stand-out performance as a suitably flamboyant Monsieur Triquet. It can be a trivial role, but he brought real character to the part and its place in the opera. Although only appearing at the close of the opera Gremin is not an easy role to sing and usually requires a bass singer to intone the dull and serious but genuinely devoted nature of Tatyana's husband, but baritone Niall Anderson handled it well.
It was such deeper resonance that was missing here, as much in the music and singing as in the direction. There is no getting away from the impact of the key scenes that Tchaikovsky so brilliantly arranged and composed, and the sweeping tug of the melodies and dances under the direction of conductor Dominic Limburg and NI Opera Orchestra concert master Joanne Quigley was superb, but it could definitely have had a little more of the depth and impact that is usually more apparent when you have native Russians in the chorus and singing roles. You can't justifiably criticise anyone for not being Russian however, particularly these days, or NI Opera for the ambition to present such a work under current arts funding restraints.
External links: Northern Ireland Opera
