Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
The Gramophone Choice
Dmitri Hvorostovsky bar Eugene Onegin Nuccia Focile sop Tatyana Neil Shicoff ten Lensky Sarah Walker mez Larina Irina Arkhipova mez Filipyevna Olga Borodina contr Olga Francis Egerton ten Triquet Alexander Anisimov bass Prince Gremin Hervé Hennequin bass Captain Sergei Zadvorny bass Zaretsky Orchestre de Paris; St Petersburg Chamber Choir / Semyon Bychkov
Philips 475 7017PM2 (141' · DDD · T/t) Buy from Amazon
This is a magnificent achievement on all sides. In a recording that is wide in range, the work comes to arresting life under Bychkov’s vital direction. Too often of late, on disc and in the theatre, the score has been treated self-indulgently and on too large a scale. Bychkov makes neither mistake, emphasising the unity of its various scenes, never lingering at slower tempi than Tchaikovsky predicates, yet never moving too fast for his singers.
Focile and Hvorostovsky prove almost ideal interpreters of the central roles. Focile offers keen-edged yet warm tone and total immersion in Tatyana’s character. Aware throughout of the part’s dynamic demands, she phrases with complete confidence, eagerly catching the girl’s dreamy vulnerability and heightened imagination in the Letter scene, which has that sense of awakened love so essential to it. Then she exhibits Tatyana’s new-found dignity on Gremin’s arm and finally her desperation when Onegin reappears to rekindle her romantic feelings.
Hvorostovsky is here wholly in his element. His singing has at once the warmth, elegance and refinement Tchaikovsky demands from his anti-hero. He suggests all Onegin’s initial disdain, phrasing his address to the distraught and humiliated Tatyana – Focile so touching here – with distinction, and brings to it just the correct bon ton, a kind of detached humanity. He fires to anger with a touch of the heroic in his tone when challenged by Lensky, becomes transformed and single-minded when he catches sight of the ‘new’ Tatyana at the St Petersburg Ball. Together he, Focile and Bychkov make the finale the tragic climax it should be: indeed, this passage is almost unbearably moving in this reading.
Shicoff has refined and expanded his Lensky since he recorded it for Levine (DG). His somewhat lachrymose delivery suits the character of the lovelorn poet, and he gives his big aria a sensitive, Russian profile, full of much subtlety of accent, the voice sounding in excellent shape, but there is a shade too much self-regard when he opens the ensemble at Larin’s party with ‘Yes, in your house’. Anisimov is a model Gremin, singing his aria with generous tone and phrasing while not making a meal of it. Olga Borodina is a perfect Olga, spirited, a touch sensual, wholly idiomatic with the text – as, of course, is the revered veteran Russian mezzo Arkhipova as Filipyevna, an inspired piece of casting. Sarah Walker, Covent Garden’s Filipyevna, is here a sympathetic Larina. Also from the Royal Opera comes Egerton’s lovable Triquet; but whereas Gergiev, in the theatre, dragged out his couplets inordinately, Bychkov once more strikes precisely the right tempo.
There will always be a very special place in the discography of the opera for the vintage Russian versions but, as a recording, they are naturally outclassed by the Philips, which now becomes the outright recommendation.
Additional Recommendations
Weikl Eugene Onegin Kubiak Tatyana Burrows Lensky John Alldis Choir; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Solti
Decca 417 413-2DH2 (143’ · ADD) Buy from Amazon
A polished old warhorse, conducted by Solti with superlative warmth, and international principals. The theatrical energy is there but, despite orchestral gloss and some superb singing, especially Stuart Burrows’s Lensky, it never quite attains the idiomatic feeling of more Slavic versions.
(In English)
Hampson Eugene Onegin Te Kanawa Tatyana Rosenshein Lensky WNO Chorus and Orchestra / Mackerras
Chandos CHAN3042 (142’ · DDD) Buy from Amazon
This English-language recording is not the best, but with Thomas Hampson’s strong Onegin and Mackerras’s propulsive, atmospheric conducting it’s still enjoyable; and for non-Russian listeners the English does make this intimate drama much more immediate.
