 | |
 | |
 |  |  | |  | |  | |  | | ||||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | | |  | | |  | | |  | ||||||||||||||||||
 |  |  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
EUGENE ONEGIN (1999) | ||
| | |
Reviewed by Tom Sutcliffe (4 June 1999) Tony Britten has been chasing his dream of opera as theatre for nearly 15 years now. Using actors who can sing in preference to singers who can act is reassuring for some. Opera singing is high octane, intense, assertive and can be (let's admit) approximate about words. But does Tchaikovsky work without that bloom and beauty in the voice, that inspirational richness of timbre, which even threadbare opera singers embody? Britten's company, Music Theatre London, has done Traviata and the great Mozarts - all just as difficult vocally as Eugene Onegin. In a way this latest staging is Britten's most intelligent and sensitive adaptation. Richard Balcombe's imaginative re-orchestration for a band of six musicians - electric piano, horn, flute, double bass, clarinet and oboe - is remarkably reminiscent of the atmosphere of Tchaikovsky's original orchestral colours. One gets the authentic flavour of this most delicate and romantic of works. "The biggest shift is to transpose Pushkin to the world of Noel Coward and Nancy Mitford. It's Anglo-Ireland in the 1930s - nannies, happy hunting grounds, stirrup cups and cocktails. The sets are very effective and the album-style video clips of hunting and mucking around are crafty and fun. Forster's gay novel, Maurice, is cited in Neil Bartlett's programme note: the staging hints Lensky and Onegin are like Charles and Sebastian in Brideshead." This fits the low-wattage, very English singing, and suits the "Who's for tennis" altered text. But displacing the Russian soul washes out the intensity and epic resonance of Tatiana and Onegin's jarring, badly timed, angst-filled encounters. Tony Britten is exploiting Tchaikovsky for insufficient pay-back. Thomasin Tresize's Olga and Kieran Creggan's Triquet are pleasant to hear. Simon Butteriss's Lensky surprises himself with a few proper top notes. Liza Pulman and Darryl Knock, however, are just too underpowered to flesh out their lovelorn tale. -------------------- Reviewed by Helen Elsom (2 June 1999) MTL's Eugene Onegin is set in a Brideshead version of England. The first two acts are set in an English country house in 1930, with Lady Chat peasants and a hunt ball. The third act is set in London in 1940, with Onegin a declassed officer and Gremin a decent old general. The idea is fine, not only because the ambivalent bond between Lensky and Onegin can be seen as being similar to that between Charles and Sebastian, but also because Charles' golden memory from a world gone to pot is similar to Onegin's final regret. (This production has Onegin and Lensky explicitly as former lovers.) Unfortunately, Onegin is much more "operatic" than most of the works MTL have tackled in the past. The key scenes -- Tatiana's letter, Lensky's nostalgia depend on singing as much as any bel canto scena. Not that Liza Pulman didn't put everything into the letter scene. And Simon Butteriss was very moving in Lensky's last aria. But it all went on too long in music designed for vocal excess more than drama. In contrast, Cosi turned out (surprisingly) to be performable as drama, with updated dialogue instead of recitative, and arias and ensembles intact. And Die Fledermaus (not at all surprisingly) worked out fine as a contemporary farce with patter songs and ballads. The characterizations were amusing, though. Thomasin Tresize was a Joan Hunter Dunne of an Olga. Liza Pulman started out girlier, gauche and dreamy, and always with her nose in a book, and ended up disengaged and Claudette Colbert-elegant. Simon Butteriss was a tweedy Lensky, never obviously a poet, initially a P.G.Wodehouse twerp but showing more intelligence as his agony increased. His singing was generally something like that of a chap who can be induced to give a tenor aria at social gathering. Darryl Knock was good and supercilious as Onegin, something like an unpleasant Ronald Coleman. He was obviously expensively dressed at all times in the first two acts, which made his military fatigues in act three humiliating. Unfortunately, his singing seemed close to non-existent. The characterizations were amusing, though. Thomasin Tresize was a Joan Hunter Dunne of an Olga. Liza Pulman started out girlier, gauche and dreamy, and always with her nose in a book, and ended up disengaged and Claudette Colbert-elegant. Simon Butteriss was a tweedy Lensky, never obviously a poet, initially a P.G.Wodehouse twerp but showing more intelligence as his agony increased. His singing was generally something like that of a chap who can be induced to give a tenor aria at social gathering. Darryl Knock was good and supercilious as Onegin, something like an unpleasant Ronald Coleman. He was obviously expensively dressed at all times in the first two acts, which made his military fatigues in act three humiliating. Unfortunately, his singing seemed close to non-existent. The single set consisted of sliding windows looking out on mist, with steps in front down to the stage. A rectangular screen, in a similar art deco style to the set, came down for projections in each intermezzo. The "home movies" of Onegin and Lensky at college during the prelude to the duel, and Lensky and Olga viewed by a wrecked Olga from a wheelchair before the final scene, were particularly moving. The small ensemble (piano, wind, cello and bass) gave an impressive account of the score in an arrangement that didn't try to produce the sweep of a full orchestra. | ||
| | |