Eugene Onegin, at Grange Park Opera, review

Stephen Medcalf directs a sensitively intelligent staging of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, says John Allison.

Full of letters: 'Eugene Onegin' at Grange Park Opera

Such strong autobiographical echoes as Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin contains make it surprising that few opera directors pick over them in their stagings.

In 1877, the year he began adapting Pushkins verse novel by setting what would become the opera’s Letter Scene, the composer almost simultaneously entered into close correspondence with the patroness he never met, Nadezhda von Meck, and agreed to marry a former student, Antonina Milyukova, in a futile attempt to scotch rumours about his sexuality.

Luckily for Grange Park Opera, Stephen Medcalf is not the sort of director to impose far-fetched scenarios on this most perfect of operas. But his sensitively intelligent staging, evoking the period of composition, is full of letters.

The panels of Francis O’Connor’s airy set are not only decorated with atmospheric birch trees but also patterned with handwriting. Poor Onegin becomes burdened with letters, picking up the note he had attempted to return to Tatyana, and even finding an epistle on the body of Lensky after having shot him.

In his initial rejection of Tatyana, Onegin is not portrayed as the cold, caddish figure of tradition. As he explains, he is hardly made for family life or wedded bliss. Onegin’s preferences have been hinted at – or more – before, of course. But, as portrayed here by Brett Polegato, the character has rare depth. Polegato’s warm, supple baritone makes this a complete characterisation.

The balconied set also allows Medcalf to articulate the class distinctions at work in this story. If it is one step too far to have the elderly Gremin return at the end with his pistol pointing downstairs towards Onegin, at least we see that Onegin, once above Tatyana socially, is now beneath her. In another twist, Medcalf turns Onegin’s duel with Lensky into Russian roulette.

In further contrast to Covent Garden’s recent, feeble Onegin, this one is also lucidly conducted. Martyn Brabbins, in charge of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, finds the natural ebb and flow in Tchaikovsky’s score and is instinctive in his support of the cast.

Suffering from a bug on the first night, Susan Gritton still harnessed her glowing soprano to haunting effect as Tatyana. Clive Bayley’s grizzled Gremin is immaculately delivered, Frances Bourne is a lively Olga, and Anne-Marie Owens a warm Larina. Unbalancing things, Robert Anthony Gardiner’s tenor is a size too small as Lensky.