REVIEW: Eugene Onegin

REVIEW: Scottish Opera's Eugene Onegin

Eden Court, Inverness

* * * * *

STRIKINGLY dark and emotionally-charged, this Scottish Opera production of Eugene Onegin is an unmissable meditation on the bittersweet sorrows first love can inict.

In the Pushkin-based story, an older Tatyana (Rosy Anders) looks back to her youth. As a girl who stays in the country with her mother, sister and nanny, she falls instantly in love with the world-weary young dandy Eugene Onegin when he visits with his friend the poet Lensky, their neighbour.

But a rejected love declaration, a duelling tragedy and a marriage later, Onegin and Tatyana meet again with the tables turned.

Bold directing from Oliver Mears included a real horse making a heroic first entrance for Onegin (Samuel Dale Johnson) and an instantly-smitten Tatyana.

And from Johnson, Mears drew a performance of stunning transformation from graceful bachelor to Act III’s hunched, shambling wreck.

But powering this production was the spirit and honesty of Natalya Romaniw’s portrayal of Tatyana – more than matched by a voice rich and responsive enough to bring the character’s lifetime of difficult emotions, and Tchaikovsky’s music, alive.

With the orchestra under conductor Stuart Stratford there were many moments to savour, such as the little repeated oboe, ute and harp motif in the letter scene, while sinking into the lush sound created throughout from Tchaikovsky’s romantic score.

Designer Annemarie Woods had created a faded, wintry Larin famiy home with giant stove and huge shuttered windows, set off by a succession of atmospheric tableaux created by lighting designer Fabiana Piccioli – the eerie golden morning light of the duelling scene just one.

Using the gauze curtain – or scrim – towards the back of the stage worked well where it distanced the

chorus from the leads. And it made for clever silhouetting of raised wine glasses, open fans and extended cigarettes to add detail to enhance the production’s muted palette.

Throughout, dance reected Tatyana’s journey.

By Act III, grown-up Tatyana – at ease at her husband’s society ball – is troubled by the return of Onegin. A warning he will trouble Tatyana too comes through the way he disrupts the beautiful solo by the ballerina played by former Scottish Ballet principal Eve Mutso.

Among the three-dimensional characters, special mention should also go to both tenor Peter Auty for his tragic poet Lensky – and bass James Platt. MC

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