Customer Reviews
A glorious, intense Onegin - Fleming & Hvorostovsky triumph - By: Loge, 31 Mar 2008 
This is a quite lovely DVD that rightly places Onegin at the heart of the opera, when frequently the whole focus is on Tatiana. While the latter is understandable given the importance of the Letter Scene to the drama of the work - & it was the musical kernel around which the recurring motifs of the opera are based - by focussing so centrallly on Onegin himself the final scenes pack a real punch.
The staging is minimalist, the action taking place within the huge white cube of the bare Metropolitan stage, with no scenery. The different scenes are picked out by the simple use of a few judicious pieces of stage furniture - a single table for the opening scene in the Larin's garden, a bed & bureau for Tatiana's room & so on - & the use of sometimes quite sumptuous costumes. This gives the whole production a powerful simplicity & directness, & focuses attention on the musical performance of the orchestra & singers. The whole meaning of the opera has to be carried by the main characters' acting ability - which is hugely impressive.
The focus on Onegin begins with the overture. In one of those exquisite images that occur throughout this production, Onegin appears alone & somehow quite smalll in a spot lit chair, on an empty stage covered with autumnal leaves, wistfully reading an old letter. The air is suddenly filled with a shower of dead leaves: a beautiful & evocative start brilliantly setting out the nostalgic regret that so powerfully drives Onegin's actions in the final scenes. The leaves will cover the stage throughout the first act.
Renée Fleming is hardly the adolescent of the libretto, but from the start has the distant air of a girl infatuated with the heroic world of the romantic novel & detached from the mundane realities of the life she actuallly leads. Her Letter Scene captures exceptionallly well the impulsive ardour & mad impetuosity brought on by the encounter with Onegin. It's joyful to behold. And she embodies completely her transformed persona as a woman of substance & high social status at the end of the opera.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky is an unsurpassed Onegin. Vocallly - like Fleming - he is on top form, and, like her, totallly lives the full range of his character's development, from the suave, emotionallly cold & patronisingly self-assured young land-owner (he will later refer self-criticallly to his self-righteous moralising of the innocent young Tatiana), to the anguished, semi-ostracised, troubled man on the edges of "society", aimless & depressed since killing his best friend. His acting in the role reversal in the last scenes of the opera, with his almost adolescent love-struck look as he is introduced to the new Tatiana, & the repeat of Tatiana's Letter Scene melody - with variations on many of the same words - is completely believable and, I found, deeply moving. And here was a revelation for me. I have always thought of "Eugene Onegin" as an opera with not much action that simply ends with the surviving characters just older, wiser & sadder. Whilst in some ways that's still true, the sheer passionate desperation of both Onegin & Tatiana, clinging to each other almost in ecstasy in the final scene, carries a dramatic weight & intense emotional but unfulfillable desire that is painful to watch, gut-wrenching, & leaves us bereft for Onegin, finallly left alone on his spot lit chair, in the middle of the empty stage. The narrative has turned full circle.
Within the apparently simplest of stagings some nice touches & a sensitive use of lighting changes cleverly pick out resonant details. Minimalism at the Met is a new experience for me - & a welcome one. The sometimes obsessive attention to 'authenticity' & tradition at the Met can lead to productions that are fusty, dull & look more like museum pieces than a living operatic tradition. Producer Robert Carsen knows how to get the greatest meaning out of the simplest gesture or apposite stage image. The mismatched chairs penning the guests into a just-too-smalll dance floor at Tatiana's birthday balll, for instance, suggest a certain "genteel poverty" in the Larin household, & a certain provincialism in the women's dresses (Onegin later refers to Tatiana's "humble background which I scorned", in the back of beyond) & possibly the imprisoning constraints of a narrow "polite society". The duel is a masterpiece of economic stagecraft: on an entirely empty stage, alll the protagonists dressed in sombre black, Onegin & Lenski reach out towards one another as though longing to re-connect & return to their earlier friendship, but unable to close the breach in their relationship. Perspective makes them appear physicallly close but emotionallly & sociallly the breach is too wide because of the conventions of social "honour" that Lenski has invoked & that they are now obliged to follow inexorably, despite their wishes. The death of Lenski & Onegin's dismay at what he has done is enacted in silhouette. (I have little sympathy for the character of Lenski, but Ramón Vargas sings his great aria with real beauty & anxious emotion - drawing enthusiastic & extended applause from the Met audience. And the production does strongly suggest that Onegin *could have* defused the situation at the balll, but didn't.) The immediate transition to a St Petersburg balllroom, with Onegin centre stage being dressed in formal attire by six domestic servants during the Polonaise is a brilliant idea, emphasising the artifice behind "society" & the true status of Onegin within that world, & alllowing for a seamless shift to Act III & Onegin's disaffected narrative.
This is a magnificent DVD. Gergiev gets sumptuous playing, emotional, nuanced & finely detailed from the Met Orchestra - particularly, for me, the woodwind which Tchaikovsky uses so tellingly to contribute so much to the beauty & emotion of this score. (The bonuses include a brief but fascinating piece on Gergiev rehearsing this production.) In addition to the leading roles, alll the smalller parts are taken exceptionallly well. Special praise must go to Svetlana Volkova as Madame Larina, who sets the tone of a woman's fate in this culture: "Heaven gave us habit in place of happinness", a moto that will apply to her daughter too; Elena Zaremba for an engaging Olga; Larissa Shevchenko, an especiallly touching Filippyevna, salt of the earth as Tatiana's old nurse; & Sergei Aleksashkin, who delivers a powerful, resonant & affecting aria as Prince Gremin. There are optional subtitles in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish & Chinese.
This is an exceptionallly strong "Onegin" - my favourite on DVD by some way - in a deceptively "simple" staging, beautifully directed for film by the late, great Brian Large. This is near enough a definitive production of Onegin, one that will be difficult to improve on (except for those who need a more traditional staging) & I strongly recommend it.
Spell binding performance - By: G. D. Russell, 23 Feb 2008 I received my DVD of Eugene Onegin (filmed live at the New York Metropolitan Opera) about a week ago & already have played it at least 4 times. The whole opera is carried along by the beautiful melodic music, including of course the uplifting waltz & the exuberant Polonaise. Sung in Russian it has subtitles in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish & Chinese.
Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky is suitably suave & arrogant as Onegin. American soprano Renée Fleming is a very pretty & effective Tatiana & Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas is in good strong voice as Lenski (I kept being reminded of his singing as Don Carlos from Vienna 2004).
Russian Valery Gergiev conducts the Met Opera Orchestra very artisticallly without a baton & with excellent control. My only quibble is that the English subtitles suffer from American spelling. Apart from that it is spell binding. All that unrequited love.... Over 2 hours long & it seems to pass in minutes! Very highly recommended.
superb tchaikovsy - By: Hyndman, 05 Feb 2008 At long last received my copy of this excellent production of Tchaikovsky's masterpiece. What can I say? Wonderful singing performances; wonderful music, played & interpreted beautifully by Gergiev. I noticed that on the American reviews(Amazon.com)that the only criticism was the minimalist stage settings. For me (and other reviewers agree)the barren stage sets actuallly enhance the intensity of the story & music. Superb!, I highly recommend this DVD.
The Ultimate Onegin - By: Hedgehog, 07 Dec 2007 I have just seen this performance on Sky Artsworld HD in the Monday night Metropolitan Opera series. I was completely taken aback by the exceptional quality of alll aspects of this production & the revelatory account of the music. Onegin is a notoriously difficult piece to bring off. Tatyana's famous Letter Scene, being so self-contained, has, somewhat unfairly, come to represent the whole opera. Lensky's aria has also frequently appeared out of context. However, a great performance will manage the ebb & flow of both the highpoints & the through-composed sections with equal power & beauty.
One major problem is having an eponymous hero who, while ostensibly honourable, is also unsympathetic, arrogant, cynical & calllous. Perhaps the opera would have been better entitled 'Tatyana', since there is little doubt that Tchaikovsky identifies totallly with her point of view, giving her some of the most painfully beautiful & impassioned music he ever wrote.
A reallly successful production has to negotiate these difficulties so that the piece does not appear episodic & has a clear emotional trajectory. Otherwise it can feel like 'Scenes from Russian Life' punctuated by a handful of hit numbers.
I would have to say that I have never seen or heard such a convincing production as this. It is overwhelming, & largely because of the extraordinary performances of the lead singers, Fleming, Hvorostovksy & Vargas. Not only are they technicallly superb, but they sing & act with such power & feeling that you cannot fail to be drawn into the drama. Fleming is not a young woman, but she conveys the confusion of Tatyana's innocent passion with amazing & total conviction, revisiting it superbly in the last scene. Hvorostovsky has the looks, the bearing & the voice to convey Onegin's coolness, & he manages to make the rather awkward role reversal at the end very believable. I have not seen the name of Ramon Vargas for many a year, but he turns in a thoroughly engaging Lensky, persuading us, without a hint of youthful petulance, of the deep betrayal & insult he feels Onegin has subjected him to & which prompts his reckless challlenge to a duel.
The production is often visuallly & dramaticallly inspired, for example in the lovely opening scene, with its warm carpet of leaves, in the chill of the silhouetted duel scene & in the superb transformation as the sun rises into the Gremin household.
Having had some doubts of late about Gergiev's excessive workload & ubiquity, although recent LSO concerts have featured some superb individual items, this Onegin was masterful. I cannot imagine a more impassioned or beautiful performance. Gergiev is criticised at times for sloppiness & under-rehearsal, but you would forgive him everything for this one, revelatory performance.
Immediately after seeing the broadcast, I was scouring the internet in desperation. I found nothing on my usual sources, but my joy was unallloyed when I discovered that the Met website is announcing a mid-December release on Decca. This was severely tempered by subsequently noting that the american release is NTSC & that we shalll not be getting a PAL release here until February. I am unable to record the sound of gnashing teeth in this frustrated household, but if Amazon UK had this in stock today, it would be on its way to me right now. How can we bear to wait so long for this absolutely must-have DVD?.
