Absolute Tops at The Grange
Eugene Onegin Tchaikovsky -Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra: illustration by Sarah Keen:
The Grange
Fortunate to return to The Grange on Friday last for a production of Eugene Onegin. My first time of seeing this opera - so bear with me while I work through it. The curtain opens on an exceptionally pretty scene. If Kate Greenaway designed costumes and sets - this is what it would look like. Dancers spin through a graceful garden while two young women (Tatyana and Olga) listen to Tatyana’s mother Larina and nurse sing fondly of times past. To my surprise and delight they reference Richardson and his book Grandison; an author I haven’t thought of in years. Meanwhile Tatyana is revealed as young girl who always has her nose in a book and seems wholly uninterested in marriage or men.
Pretty as this scene is some dark threads sound through it. Both older women have been married off against their will. If they read Grandison they would have known Richardson’s earlier work Clarissa; a book about rape. Meanwhile Tatyana is skipping around like Kylie Minogue in her soap Neighbour days. She meets Eugene Onegin (EO) when he visits with his childhood friend Lenski. Its clear that EO is a CAD with capital C.A.& D but once they have taken a turn around the garden Tatyana is hopelessly, teenagedly in love with the handsome beast. She writes him an ill advised letter expressing her feelings. Next morning EO arrives and mansplains that Tatyana is a young thing of no interest to him, she reads too much and he doesn’t like to see her ‘bent over a book’. Well what would he like to see her bent over, one wonders crudely.
Wondrously charming as ACT I is, the truth was I felt a little disengaged. It’s been years since I have had to think about my bookish teenage self and mad crushes. I am not a great fan of emotions running wild (so distracting). I felt myself missing the visceral danger that Cleopatra and Cornelia was exposed to last week. ACT II opens on Tatyana’s name day and unfortunately EO turns up. He tells us he is bored by the common herd ( so tedius) and decides to flirt with Lenski’s fiancee. This leads to a duel between the two men and in this production EO tricks his friend into thinking they will reconcile and then kills him in cold blood. At this point the staging becomes extraordinarily exciting. The dancers return - dressed in black. One mimics the duel and then EO is pulled from the scene, stripped - put into a tuxedo and we realise that he is now back in the heart of high society. Immense chandeliers light the stage, the dancers race behind him, like dangerous currents of the subconscious mind and we are plunged into glittering ball scene. Here EO tells us, he is restless, discontented, life without meaning (you don’t say EO) then across the room he espies the beautiful Princess Gremin whom he instantly recognises as Tatyana.
We are told nothing of Tatyana and Prince Gremin’s courtship but the prince steps forward and in one of the most beautiful arias in the opera tells us how much he loves her; she shines like a star in the night's darkest hour, in a pure, clear sky, It brought the house down. IS EO pleased? Reader he is not. He launches into an audacious attempt at seduction. Two dancers step out of the shadow and dance together while the main protagonists are unable to unite. Tatyana loves EO but rejects him as her love for her family is greater. The chandeliers lower to the ground as she sings and the lights go out.
Here is the greatness of this story- expressively told. While I feared the first act was going to engage wholly in adolescent drama, the final two took us into Time and where we live in it. How do we react when someone who had the most tremendous power in our past returns to our present. Do we stand on the beach with eternal seas crashing around us and wish for one minute, for one moment we too could detach, dance to an old tune and return unharmed?
This is a beautiful production, beautifully sung and played. The solo clarinet echoed an aria in Act 1 with lyrical clarity. Sung in Russian by Russian speakers it was a linguistic and musical delight. This version of Eugene Onegin has rightly received rave reviews to which I add this one.
However, please let me channel my inner Miranda Priestly for a moment...
Why did Tatyana love this version of Eugene Onegin so much? The moment he murdered his childhood friend in cold blood would have been the end for most people. Here, Eugene was not a dangerously, attractive, Byronic character. The staging that we saw here was classical, in period and introduced nothing new. Today we all know how teenagers sext each other, the pressure that is put on them to do so. Meanwhile social media is having a fab time identifying narcissistic traits in men. Oh Eugene - do take a look. The DAVO play book is minutely detailed and shared. It would have been fascinating to see this opera against a social media setting.
The Grange is always of course compared to Glyndebourne. I think two things about that. Every time we go to The Grange it has improved, the grounds, the layout, the catering. A gentle plea to the Opera Gods that a path is put from the lawn across the gravel drive. This would allow people to pull their festival trolleys to the lower lake side without having a hernia. Finally Glyndebourne, I suspect, has a ruthless regard to perfection that The Grange does not . There would be a special place in hell for the Glyndebourne ASM who allowed a chandelier to squeak loudly as it was lowered to the stage floor. Fortunately the singing was so extraordinarily good, the emotion so well expressed that it overcame this distraction. If it had been less accomplished the metallic whine could have rendered the whole event bathetic.
That’s all x
The next production of this opera at The Grange is 4,10,12 July
The Grange Festival - details here. Tickets from £12