Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin Opera-in-Concert @ The Dallas Symphony Orchestra
—Wayne Lee Gay
The underlying question surrounding any semi-staged or concert version of an opera is, necessarily, “Why?” Or, precisely, why squeeze a dramatic work intended to be staged—with costumes, scenery, action—into the narrower confines of a static concert piece?
Live performance of a neglected but worthy operatic work is one good reason. Desire to emphasize the musical rather than the dramatic possibilities of a particular opera is another. And the desire of an orchestral conductor to bring his/her own sensibilities to a specific work is yet another.
One might well eliminate the first reason for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and conductor Fabio Luisi’s concert presentation of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. While not one of the most frequently produced operas, it’s definitely a permanent item in the international operatic repertoire, and old-timers like me have seen several live productions of Onegin in Dallas and Fort Worth in our opera-going careers.
The other two possibilities loom large: clearly, conductor Luisi wanted to craft his own powerful statement of the piece, using the considerable vocal and orchestral forces available to him in Dallas. And, though the opera house next door at the Winspear is one of the best venues for opera in the world, the acoustic environment of the Meyerson Symphony Center ranks equally well, particularly for high Romantic music and vocal-orchestral synthesis. The Meyerson is an ideal setting for a complex operatic work loaded with great arias, orchestral sequences, and choruses.
All of which brings up the biggest issue involved in the “semi-staged” production: keeping interest alive and at play in music intended for performance with dramatic visual action. In many concert and semi-staged versions, the singers wear standard concert attire and simply stand in place, oratorio-style. For this version, stage director Alberto Triola invents a magnificently effective concept, skirting past the opulent staging Tchaikovsky would have expected in the great operatic halls of imperial Russia.
In the manner of an oratorio, the soloists in this version perform in front of the orchestra, with the chorus arrayed behind the musicians. But the principals do much more than simply stand and sing: they move across the front of the stage, attired for large parts of the performance in what we might call weekend casual. For ballroom scenes, Triola’s take on contemporary formal wear is virtually identical to nineteenth-century formal attire for men, and surprisingly similar for women. (The dress soprano Nicole Car wears in the ballroom scenes as Tatyana would fit in nicely on the red carpet at the Oscars.)
Even more striking were the sets: along with occasional chairs and tables, mounds of books are piled high near the edge of the stage, both left and right. In place of other props, singers pick up books, appear to be reading from them, tear pages out, and sometimes pin the removed pages to a classroom-style cork board. To what end? Perhaps to remind us that Eugene Onegin was originally a 5,000-line novel in verse (by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin) exploring the relationship of life and fiction via the adventures of a selfish young aristocrat. While there’s a good deal of sly humor in Pushkin’s book, Tchaikovsky and his librettist turned the tale into a more straightforward romantic tragedy, and took the didactic moral more seriously. Director Triola makes us very aware of that contradiction (the divergence between novel and opera) in his introduction of the striking image of hundreds of books, as well as the presence of visual actions that sometimes contradict those written into the opera libretto.
That said, the production that emerges on the concert stage at the Meyerson is unfailingly powerful and fascinating. The cast is dramatically and vocally strong: Canadian baritone Etienne Dupuis finds the beauty and dark power in the title role, opposite Australian soprano Car’s extravagantly rich soprano voice as she transforms from innocent country girl to experienced aristocrat. Slovakian tenor Pavol Breslik brings a strikingly gorgeous, textured tone to the role of the ill-fated poet Lensky (a character with whom both Pushkin and Tchaikovsky surely identified); American mezzo-soprano Melody Wilson matches with a velvet-but-substantial quality as Tatyana’s sister Olga. Tchaikovsky spread the vocal glories and challenges around generously: British bass Brindley Sherratt won one of the loudest ovations at Friday’s opening night performance for his brief appearance as Prince Gremin. The entire cast, indeed, brought that dark-hued quality essential to Russian vocal music.
Conductor Luisi, clearly devoted to this masterful mixture of Russian Romantic music and Russian Romantic literature, brought out the best in the Dallas Symphony, placing this operatic masterpiece on the same level with Tchaikovsky’s greatest symphonic scores. A small dance ensemble directed by Diana Crowder distilled and modernized a portion of Tchaikovsky’s grand dance segments, and at moments visually personified psychological aspects of the drama. Meanwhile, the Dallas Symphony Chorus (sometimes doubling as a whimsical “card” section holding up signs) has clearly resumed its pre-pandemic status as one of the finest choral ensembles in America.
WHEN: Tuesday at 7 p.m.
WHERE: Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
WEB: dallassymphony.org
