Eugene Onegin: Royal Opera House

But whom to love?
To trust and treasure?
Who won’t betray us in the end?

Ted Huffman’s production Eugene Onegin, based on Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse, is a story about unrequited love. It’s about love that is poorly timed or never spoken. It’s about the longing that eats at you from the inside and the devastation that haunts you years later. It’s about the roles we are meant to play in life that don’t fit us. It’s about not knowing yourself, not even knowing your own feelings. But above all, it explores our nature of making mistakes and living with the consequences.

Stripped back and bare, the stage is left to the occasional addition of a few chairs, long tables to mark a ballroom, falling snow to signal the passing of seasons. There is a loss of time and place, two dimensions so critical in Pushkin’s portrayal of the hold heartfelt emotions can have on us all – and the context of early 19th-century Russian society.¦

The production opens with Onegin stood at the back of the stage, as what is ultimately his story begins to unfold around him.

The costume design is relatively modern, or at least, what would in contemporary terms be considered ‘retro’, which is less problematic than the colder interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s lyrical adaptation. Pushkin’s work is one of devastation, heartache, a masterpiece of emotional agony and the haunting echoes of regret. And while the score itself works wonders to translate literary expression through music, Tchaikovsky doesn’t make it easy to convey the affecting prowess of Pushkin’s writing, the portrayal of crescendo-built scenes fell short of their mark or are shockingly rewritten.

While the performers themselves are no doubt adept and skilled, filled with a living expressiveness and stellar voices, as far as operas go, this adaptation lacked an emotional engagement so crucial to the opera – and Onegin in particular.

As the acts unfurl, the production lacks an emotional truth that, admittedly, has led to much criticism around Tchaikovsky’s adaption itself. But there is an emotional failure as the depths of passion were lost amidst the black backdrops and dashed hopes – many of which were sadly in the auditorium.

Perhaps it’s my own bias for carrying an immense love of the original work itself. But Monsieur Triquet as a fully made-up clown was just one example of a disappointment gone too far.

Eugene Onegin is showing until October 14.