Eugene Onegin the Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series

Eugene Onegin

Page 1

Eugene Onegin Russian opera in three acts

Music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Libretto by Tchaikovsky and Konstantin Shilovsky after the poem Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

Premiere at the Moscow Conservatory March 29, 1879

Adapted from the Opera Journeys Lecture Series by Burton D. Fisher

Brief Synopsis Characters in the Opera Story Narrative with Music Highlights Tchaikovsky and Eugene Onegin

Page 2 Page 2 Page 3 Page 11

Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series

Published and Copywritten by Opera Journeys www.operajourneys.com

Eugene Onegin

Page 2

Brief Synopsis Eugene Onegin and his poet-friend Lenski visit the Larìn rural estate outside St. Petersburg. The young Tatyana becomes deeply enamored with Onegin and later writes an effusive and expansive letter declaring her love for him. Shortly thereafter, Onegin reproaches and rejects her, telling her that she should exercise more restraint and not write such inappropriate words of love in such fashion to a stranger. At a party celebrating Tatyana’s birthday, Onegin affronts his friend Lenski by flirting with Tatyana’s sister Olga, Lenski’s fiancée. Their argument leads to a duel in which Onegin kills Lenski. Seven years later, Onegin returns to St. Petersburg after having wandered abroad aimlessly and unhappily. He meets Tatyana at a ball; she is now married to his wealthy elderly cousin, Prince Gremin. In a complete reversal of sentiments, Onegin now yearns for Tatyana’s love. Tatyana acknowledges that her passions for him have been reawakened, but she spurns him, refusing to renounce her marital vows. Onegin is dismissed, rejected, shattered, and grief-stricken.

Characters in the opera Madame Larina, a landowner Mezzo-soprano Tatyana, her daughter Soprano Olga, her daughter Contralto Eugene Onegin, a young dandy Baritone Lenski, Onegin’s friend Tenor Prince Gremin, a retired general and aristocrat Bass Filipievna, Tatyana’s nurse Soprano Zaretski, a gentleman Baritone Triquet, a French tutor Tenor TIME: 1820 s PLACE: Acts I and II are set on a Russian country estate near the city of St. Petersburg. Act III takes place in St. Petersburg.

Eugene Onegin

Page 3

Story Narrative with Music Highlights ACT I - Scene 1: A garden adjoining Madame Larina’s house The widowed Mme. Larina, assisted by her devoted servant, Filipievna, is busy making jam in the garden of her country estate. Her two daughters, Tatyana and Olga, are heard singing a plaintive romantic song. Their song evokes memories for the older women of days gone by: “And did you hear him singing all night long?” Mme. Larina joins their singing with reminiscences about her youth and marriage. Tatyana and Olga: “And did you hear him singing all night long?”

Celebrating the autumnal harvest, peasants arrive from the fields bringing freshly cut hay for their mistress: ”My worn-out legs are aching after a long hard day.” Olga taunts her sister Tatyana for failing to enjoy the festivities with the peasants, and urges her to participate in the singing and dancing. Tatyana remains pensive and melancholy, reflecting the sadness in the tragedy she is reading by the English novelist Richardson. After all leave, the young poet Lenski, Olga’s fiancé, arrives with his cosmopolitan friend, Eugene Onegin. Lenski pours forth his love for Olga, expressing his happiness in seeing his beloved: “How happy, how pleased I am at long last to see you.” Lenski: “How happy, how pleased I am”

Eugene Onegin

Page 4

Onegin strolls through the garden with Tatyana and sarcastically quizzes her about her provincial lifestyle; the Russian gallant is quite candid about his distaste and indifference toward rural people. Although Tatyana is upset by his questions and attitude, she is visibly attracted to the handsome stranger. Her romantic sentiments are coldly observed by the blasé Onegin. Mme. Larina and Filipievna beckon the girls to come into the house. Filipievna recognizes from Tatyana’s bashful appearance that she has taken a fancy to this “new gentleman” — obviously she has fallen in love with Onegin at first sight.

Act I - Scene 2: Tatyana’s bedroom Tatyana is sleepless and restless. She asks Filipievna to soothe her with reminiscences about her own love and marriage. Filipievna intuitively recognizes that Tatyana is distraught and inquires if she is ill. In a moment of candor, Tatyana confesses her profound love for Onegin and bids the nurse fetch her pen, ink and paper. Tatyana, burning with yearning and desire, is resolved to reveal her passion to Onegin in a letter. She sits up the entire night writing to him, at moments having difficulty in finding the right words to express all the sentiments and emotions she dared not say to him in his presence. Can she ever love anyone but Onegin? No! Her life has been an agonizing vigil waiting for him! After Tatyana writes her impassioned outpouring of love to Onegin, she requests that they meet again. Tatyana - Letter Scene: “Though it destroy my soul, I swear it”

Eugene Onegin

Page 5

Let me die, but first let me summon happiness as yet unknown. Life’s sweetness is known to me. I drink the magic potion of desire. I am beset by visions. Everywhere I look I see my fatal tempter. No, that’s wrong. I’ll begin again. What’s the matter with me? I’m on fire. I don’t know how to begin. I write to you……….. What more can I say? I know you have the power to punish me with disdain. But if you have any pity for me, you will not abandon me. At first I wished to remain silent so you would never know my shame. Yes, I swore to lock this declaration of mad passion within my breast. Alas, I do not have the strength to subdue my heart. Whatever happens, I am prepared. I shall confess everything. Courage! He shall know all. Why did you visit us? Buried in the countryside, I would never have known you. I would never have known this torment, this turbulent heart. In the fullness of time, I would have found another and proved a faithful wife and virtuous mother. Another! No, I would not have given my heart to any other in the world. It is determined on high; it is the will of heaven. I am yours. My whole life has been a promise of this inevitable encounter. God sent you to me. You are my keeper till the grave. You appeared before me in my dreams. I loved you before I even saw you. Your gaze filled me with longing. Your voice resounded in my heart. Long ago… No, it was not a dream. I recognized you when you arrived. I almost fainted with passion. I said to myself, “It is he!” I know, I heard you. You have spoken to me before when I visited the poor, or prayed for comfort for my anguish. And at this very moment, was it not

Eugene Onegin

Page 6

the vision of you…that shone in the darkness, and stooped beside my bed…and with joy and love whispered words of hope? Are you an angel come to guard me? Or do you tempt me to discard me? Put my doubts to rest. Perhaps this is an empty dream…the self-deception of an inexperienced girl, and if something different is to happen to me, so be it! I entrust my fate to you. I am in tears before you and implore your protection. I am all alone here. No one understands me. I can think no longer, and must die in silence. I wait for you. Say the word to revive my dearest hopes…or shatter this dream with the scorn I deserve. Tatyana finishes the letter, and is frightened and ashamed to read it through. But she places her trust in Onegin’s honor, and pleads for his mercy and understanding. As dawn arrives, she gives Filipievna the letter for her grandson to deliver to Onegin.

Act I - Scene 3: The next day, in the garden In a corner of the Larina garden, peasant girls gather berries and sing about flirtations with boys. Tatyana anxiously awaits Onegin’s reply to her letter. When Onegin arrives, he tells her that her frank letter demands a reply with equal candor. He admits that he was touched by her profound declaration of love. Speaking courteously but coldly, he tells her that she has all the virtues he might want in a wife, but he would quickly tire of marriage. The most he can offer her is brotherly love. Onegin makes it clear that he does not return Tatyana’s passion, having neither the time nor the inclination for affairs of the heart. He advises her to exert more emotional control lest another man

Eugene Onegin

Page 7

fail to respect her innocence. Tatyana becomes mortified, utterly dejected, and overcome with shame. Onegin leads the humiliated Tatyana away as the peasants’ chorus is heard in the background.

ACT II - Scene 1: Some months later in a large room in Madame Larina’s house A waltz provides the background for a party celebrating Tatyana’s birthday. Young couples glide merrily across the floor as the older guests sit watching and gossiping. Onegin dances with Tatyana. Onegin is clearly bored with these country people and their provincial sensibilities, and decides to vent his spite on his friend Lenski for dragging him to the party. In an act of deliberate contempt, Onegin steals Olga away to dance. Lenski complains, but Olga defends her flirtatious behavior. Their flirtation is interrupted by Triquet, an elderly tutor, who serenades Tatyana in French: “À cette fête conviée.” When the dancing resumes, Onegin again dances with Olga as Lenski watches in anger and jealousy. After Onegin sarcastically asks Lenski why he does not join in, Lenski cannot control his rage and a quarrel ensues. Lenski accuses Onegin of being a seducer; they fight and are separated by the guests. Lenski challenges Onegin to a duel. Although Onegin regrets Lenski’s foolish actions, he recognizes that it is too late for a reconciliation. Onegin and Lenski leave separately as Lenski bids Olga a final farewell. Act II - Scene 2: A mill by a wooded stream At dawn on the banks of a stream near an old mill, Lenski awaits Onegin accompanied by his second, Zaretski. The young poet soliloquizes about his youth, the folly of his brief life, and the sadness he now feels about the unalterable course of events. He fears his imminent death in the duel, and imagines his beloved Olga visiting his grave: “Oh where, oh where, have flown my days of springtime?”

Eugene Onegin

Page 8

Lenski: “Oh where, oh where have flown my days of springtime?”

Where have you gone, golden days of my youth? What does daybreak hold for me? My eyes search in vain. Everything is shrouded in darkness. No matter! The law of fate is just. If I fall, pierced by the bullet, or if it flies wide, it is all the same. Both life and death have their hour. Blessed is the day full of care, blessed the coming of darkness. Early in the morning, the dawn gleams and daylight begins. Perhaps I shall enter the mysterious shadow of the grave. And the memory of a young poet will abruptly cease. The world will forget me, but will you come, beautiful maiden, to shed a tear on the urn? And think, “He loved me, and to me alone he devoted the sad dawn of this stormy life.” Olga, I loved you. To you alone I devoted my stormy life. Beloved of my heart, my desired one, come! I am your betrothed, come! I wait for you. Where have you gone, golden days of my youth? Onegin appears, lacking a “gentleman” as second, but bringing his coachman Guillot instead. The seconds retire and arrange the formalities. Lenski and Onegin admit to themselves that they have acted rashly, that they are involved in a ridiculous enmity, and that they would rather laugh together than fight, but pride and impulsiveness prevail.

Eugene Onegin

Page 9

After three claps by Zaretski, both men fire. Lenski falls and Zaretski confirms his death. Onegin is struck with horror.

ACT III - Scene 1: Seven years later. A hall in the palace of Prince Gremin and Princess Tatyana in St. Petersburg A magnificent ball is in progress with a grand polonaise accompanying the dancing. Onegin is present. He has traveled widely and has been seeking to alleviate his boredom. He has also become haunted by the memory of Lenski’s death and has tried to atone. Nevertheless, he notes with bitterness that his search for new meaning in life has led him to yet another monotonous social event. Suddenly, he recognizes Tatyana, no longer the country girl he met seven years earlier, but sumptuously gowned and walking with poise and dignity. After questioning his cousin, Prince Gremin, Onegin learns that Tatyana is now Gremin’s wife. Gremin, a man considerably older than Tatyana, tells Onegin that two years ago he married Tatyana, and since that moment, her love has become a great comfort in his life: “All men surrender to love’s power.” Prince Gremin: “All men surrender to love’s power”

Gremin introduces Tatyana to Onegin, describing him as both friend and cousin. Tatyana maintains her composure and excuses herself after a few words of polite conversation, but Onegin becomes agitated by their meeting. Suddenly, he becomes captivated and powerfully drawn towards Tatyana. He realizes that he indeed loves her and resolves to win back her affections.

Eugene Onegin

Page 10

Act III - Scene 2: Tatyana’s boudoir Onegin has written an impassioned letter to Tatyana, begging to see her, and Tatyana has accepted his proposal. When they meet, he falls on his knees before her and admits his passion for her. Tatyana recalls Onegin’s repugnant attitude after she impetuously admitted her love for him many years ago, and suggests to him that because she has now achieved wealth and social prominence, perhaps that is the reason she is now desirable to him. Tatyana is firm in her resolve to remain true and honor her marriage to Prince Gremin. Nevertheless, she cannot restrain her true feelings toward Onegin, and admits that her passion for him has been reawakened; indeed, she truly loves Onegin, and has always loved him. Tatyana declares that long ago they might have achieved happiness, but now any relationship would only bring her grief. Onegin’s pleas grow more ardent, and both contemplate the happiness that was once so close to them and the futility of their present plight. Onegin urges Tatyana to flee with him and find true happiness, but invoking her marital vows, she refuses to yield to him. In a final gesture, she bids Onegin to leave. Onegin is anguished, despairing, distraught, and grief-stricken.

Eugene Onegin

Page 11

Tchaikovsky..............................and Eugene Onegin

P

eter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was one of the foremost Russian composers of the nineteenth century. While studying law in St. Petersburg, he took music classes at the St. Petersburg Conservatory where his primary teacher was the renowned Russian composer and pianist Anton Rubinstein. In 1866, Anton Rubinstein’s brother, Nicholas, recognized Tchaikovsky’s exceptional talents and secured a post for him as a teacher of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory. During this early period—from 1868 through 1875—Tchaikovsky’s compositions included the operas Undine (1869) and The Oprichnik (1872); the Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat Minor (1875), one of the most popular and frequently performed piano concertos in the entire canon; Symphony No. 1, “Winter Dreams” (1868); Symphony No. 2 “Little Russian” (1873); Symphony No. 3 (1875); and the symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet (1870). In 1876, Tchaikovsky was pursued by Mme. Nadejda von Meck, the widowed mother of 16 children and wealthy heiress to a Russian railroad fortune whose enthusiasm for the composer’s music led her to become his patron and benefactor. Even though both lived in St. Petersburg, during their 15-year relationship they never met, and corresponded solely through letters. She loved Tchaikovsky the artist; he loved her for her money, inspiration, and sensitivity. Von Meck commissioned many compositions from him and provided him with a handsome annual allowance. In 1891, believing herself to be financially ruined, she terminated her patronage and their relationship. Her sudden defection was explained by friends as attributable to mental and physical illness, but it was interpreted by Tchaikovsky as a betrayal which he deemed unforgivable. The von Meck connection resulted in a rich period of productivity, highlighted by the operas Eugene Onegin (1878), The Maid of Orleans (1879), Mazeppa (1883), and The Sorceress (1887).

Eugene Onegin

Page 12

Other works included the ballets Swan Lake (1876) and The Sleeping Beauty (1889), and orchestral works such as the Rococo Variations for Cello and Orchestra (1876), the Violin Concerto in D Major (1878), Marche Slav (1876), Francesca da Rimini (1876), Symphony No. 4 in F Minor (1877), 1812 Overture (1880), Capriccio Italien (1880), Serenade (1880), Manfred Symphony (1885), Symphony no. 5 in E Minor (1888), and Hamlet (1885), as well as numerous songs. Tchaikovsky made several highly successful concert tours during the years 1887 through 1893, in which he conducted his own works before large, enthusiastic audiences in the major cities of Europe and the United States. In 1890, he composed one of his finest operas, Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades), and early in 1893, began work on his Symphony No. 6, subsequently titled Pathétique by his brother Modeste. The first performance of the work, given at St. Petersburg on October 28, 1893 under the composer’s direction, was indifferently received. Tchaikovsky died nine days later at the age of 53. Tchaikovsky’s voluminous compositions— ballets, suites, piano, violin and cello concertos, symphonies, and operas—have remained extremely popular with concertgoers. All of his works are characterized by a profound melancholy and richly melodic passages that frequently alternate with dance-like movements derived from folk tunes. Like his contemporary Russian composer, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky was an exceptionally gifted orchestrator. His ballet scores in particular contain striking orchestral coloration and effects which have never been surpassed for their melodic intensity and instrumental brilliance; Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty are notable examples. His symphonic poems, including Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, are notable for their richly melodic evocation of the moods of the literary works on which they are based. Tchaikovsky’s operas are: The Voyevoda (1868); Undine (1869); Oprichnik (1872); Eugene Onegin (1878); The Maid of Orleans (1879); Mazeppa (1883); Vakula the Smith (1885); The

Eugene Onegin

Page 13

Enchantress (1887); Pique Dame (1890); and Iolanthe (1891). Eugene Onegin was first produced in Moscow by student singers at the Little Theater of the Imperial College of Music in March 1879. Two years later, it received its first major public production at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. In 1908, the opera was introduced to the United States in concert form, sung in English, by the Symphony Society of New York, and its Metropolitan Opera premiere took place, in Italian, in March 1920. Many more recent revivals have been performed in English. Eugene Onegin and Pique Dame are the most successful of Tchaikovsky’s ten operas, both remaining as prominent fixtures within the international repertory. In Russia, Eugene Onegin is second only in popularity to Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.

T

he poems of Russia’s greatest and most revered poet, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837), were the literary source for three of Tchaikovsky’s operas: Pique Dame, Mazeppa, and Eugene Onegin. Pushkin’s poem of the latter remains one of the most beloved works of Russian literature. For Russians, who have always taken their literature seriously, the impetuous Pushkin became an icon—in effect, their uncontested “national poet” who captured the soul of the Russian people in his works. In English literature, to produce a figure of comparable scope and status, one would have to recall Shakespeare, Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and a few others. In Italian literature, similar status would be achieved by a Dante and Boccaccio, and in German literature, by a Goethe and Schiller. In his time, Pushkin was adored, analyzed and imitated; his legacy was emulated by such later Russian writers as Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Boris Pasternak and Vladimir Nabokov. Even the mighty cultural establishment of the former U.S.S.R. embraced and propagandized his work to school children in a campaign that

Eugene Onegin

Page 14

taught them to cherish him as a model of patriotism, diligence (rather stretching the truth of his often dissolute existence), and perhaps most importantly, his courageous anti-czarist behavior. Today, busts and statues of Pushkin stand in nearly every Russian city, even in such remote locales as Sochi, on the Black Sea, the resort town in which Pushkin died on January 29, 1837 from a gunshot wound received two days earlier in a duel fought over the honor of his frivolous socialite wife. He was only thirty-seven, and his death was considered a foolish and unnecessary tragedy. With respect to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin poem, its story unveils a profound irony reflecting the interplay of life and art. Events in Pushkin’s poem and events of his own life were identical. The amorous liaison of Pushkin’s wife seems not to have gone much farther than dance-floor conversations and perhaps stolen kisses, but Pushkin would demonstrate the identical bitterness, rage, and jealousy that his fictional Lenski displayed over Onegin’s flirtations with Olga. Pushkin’s honor had been insulted, particularly after receiving a spurious certificate naming him to the “Society of Cuckolds.” To settle the grievance, a duel ensued. The duel would end the life of the great poet Pushkin, just as the duel had ended the life of his fictional Lenski in his poem Eugene Onegin.

P

ushkin wrote primarily in meticulously constructed verse—his iambic pentameter familiar to all Russians—with its charms stubbornly eluding, even to this day, the efforts of even the most skilled translators. Yet several translations of Pushkin’s poems are available, including the controversial and exhaustively notated version of Eugene Onegin by the late Vladimir Nabokov. Tchaikovsky was hardly the only Russian composer to set Pushkin’s works to music. Scholars note that there are over 500 different works written by Pushkin that are the subject sources for more than 3,000 different compositions. Those works are most notably operatic: Mikhail Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila (1837); Dargomyzhsky’s The Stone

Eugene Onegin

Page 15

Guest; Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov; RimskyKorsakov’s Mozart and Salieri, The Tale of Czar Saltan, and The Golden Cockerel; Rachmaninoff’s Aleko and The Miserly Knight; Stravinsky’s Mavra; and, of course, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Pique Dame, and Mazeppa. Pushkin’s popularity is attributed to his immersion in so many of the fundamental issues that preoccupied Russian culture during the early nineteenth century: the optimism of postNapoleonic Russia, the unresolved cultural and religious conflicts between East and West, the role of the Russian folk in their music and literature, and the perennial social and political conflicts about government (autocracy vs. democracy). Tchaikovsky and Pushkin shared many predilections. Both expressed a profound love for the Classical music era. Tchaikovsky adored Mozart, but Pushkin would extol Mozart even further in his short play in verse, Mozart and Salieri. Both men shared a western-style upbringing and education; Tchaikovsky’s mother was of French ancestry, spoke French fluently, adored French literature, and even called her son Pierre as a boy. Both possessed an aristocratic sensibility that nurtured an inner torment over the conflict between their perception of their backward native Russia and the greater sophistication and refinement of Western Europe—an almost paranoid sensibility that led to a sense of alienation and guilt, if not inferiority. Tchaikovsky expressed a profound loyalty to aristocratic culture, which he expressed, for example, by including ball scenes in both Eugene Onegin and Pique Dame. This was an aspect of his work that led many contemporary Russian composers to bitterly resent him. Those composers, known as the “Mighty Handful,” or the “Five,” were the Russian musical nationalists César Cui, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Mili Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Alexander Borodin. For the most part, Tchaikovsky’s music is not engrossed in that aura of “Russianness” in which there is a profound presence of folk songs and music that evoke national and cultural stirrings. Even in Eugene Onegin, the folkish ambience is nothing more than an aspect of

Eugene Onegin

Page 16

its décor, the composer’s musical imagery intended to capture the essential realism of the rural society that is portrayed. Though Pushkin lived in the early nineteenth century, a time when the idea of aristocratic privilege went largely unchallenged in Russia, Tchaikovsky, living during the latter part of the century, sensed the evolution of dramatic political and social changes. There were signs that the sheltered aristocratic existence of czarist Russia was becoming increasingly threatened both internally and externally: the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the assassination attempt on Alexander II by terrorists in 1881, pogroms, the appearance of the first Russian Marxists, and rapid industrialization. Tchaikovsky sensed Russia’s coming political and social apocalypse—the twentieth- century Revolution that would destroy the Romanovs and the entire aristocracy—that would lead him to darken even further the despair and gloom portrayed in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Pique Dame. In both operas, Tchaikovsky portrayed Pushkin’s canvas of human passion with a deeper sense of disillusionment, doom, foreboding, and death—all seemingly a metaphor, or a forecast, of the ominous changes about to appear on the Russian horizon. By updating and transforming Pushkin to his own contemporary times, Tchaikovsky was artistically portraying a golden age that was about to disappear.

O

riginally, Tchaikovsky hesitated to dramatize Pushkin’s eight cantos of Eugene Onegin into an operatic format, as its story was imbedded with too many theatrical drawbacks. Its plot was wild, bizarre, and slender; its ironical narration was banal and satirical; its story itself was a satire on Byron in which the telling seemed to be more important than the tale. From Tchaikovsky’s perspective, Pushkin’s story was a nasty, merciless, and satirical ridiculing of two of its principal characters, Tatyana and Lenski—the two characters Tchaikovsky identified with most.

Eugene Onegin

Page 17

Nevertheless, Eugene Onegin contained that verbal dazzle that was vintage Pushkin: a wry social commentary, perfectly exact descriptions, and endlessly subtle nuances of characterization. Pushkin’s genius was his ability to portray the interaction of intense and passionate personal relationships with ironic descriptions of social conventions, and Tchaikovsky became uncontrollably lured and bewitched by the story and its characterizations. In developing the text to his opera Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky collaborated with his friend Konstantin Shilovsky. In one sense, the two librettists were adamant to remain faithful and preserve most of Pushkin’s original verses, but in another sense, they attempted to infuse the characters with more human rather than satirical qualities. During the entire composition process, Tchaikovsky was insecure about the effectiveness of dramatizing Pushkin’s poem. He was very much aware that all educated Russians were familiar with Pushkin’s stories and most could recite them by heart, so he performed the opera’s premiere with students from the Moscow Conservatory, inferring that he was relying heavily on the audience’s familiarity with Pushkin’s plot as it moved from scene to scene. In that sense, their understanding of the plot was an assurance of success. Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky was overcome with insecurities about the ultimate work, and excused it as a sequence of “lyric scenes” without dramatic action. In other words, he claimed that he was presenting episodic vignettes, or individual portraits that represented extracts from the larger Pushkin story, and they were specifically intended to project mood and character rather than dramatic conflict. Indeed, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin contains a sparse development of dramatic ideas and continuity. It is certainly a work far removed from the late nineteenth-century hyperRomanticism of Wagner’s music dramas. Eugene Onegin contains seven disconnected “lyric scenes.” Act I is composed of three scenes: Tatyana meets Onegin; Tatyana writes her letter;

Eugene Onegin

Page 18

Onegin spurns Tatyana. In Act II, there are two scenes: Tatyana’s birthday party; the duel scene. In Act III, there are two scenes: the ball when Onegin meets Tatyana again; Tatyana rejects Onegin. Tchaikovsky’s explanation of Eugene Onegin as “lyric scenes” indicates that he viewed his opera in terms of an intimate portrayal of character rather than a mechanical plot with complex conflicts and passions. In essence, his purpose was to create characters who were living, sensitive human beings. His guideline may have been Bizet’s Carmen, an opera he adored, because it portrayed real human passion. Its realism, or verismé, brought a new thrust to the lyric stage when it premiered in 1875. In contrast, he abhorred Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, considering it a cold portrayal of what he termed theoretical ideas that were presented with puppet-like characters. Nevertheless, his doubts and insecurity about the effectiveness of his “intimate” Eugene Onegin would be described quite candidly in a letter to his patron Mme. von Meck: “Its content is very unsophisticated…..there are no scenic effects, the music lacks brilliance and rhetorical effectiveness.” Churning at the core of Eugene Onegin’s “lyric scenes” is Tchaikovsky’s inner angst: his feelings of anxiety, his apprehension and insecurity, his inner yearning, his personal agony, and a sense of soul-sick melancholy. In that sense, Eugene Onegin is the musical portrayal of the composer’s suffering, those same feelings and sentiments he expressed in all of his music. Pushkin’s prized narrative voice, its intimate portrayal of the soul of its leading characters–if at times satirical and ridiculing—blended perfectly with Tchaikovsky’s poignant musical language. As a result, Eugene Onegin maintains its lofty place in the Russian national tradition because culturally Russians easily relate to the geography of its realism. The opera story presents an intimate portrait of feelings, sentiments, and misunderstandings, as the characters’ emotions interact with society’s conventions, etiquette, proprieties, rules and manners.

Eugene Onegin

Page 19

But instead of Pushkin’s narrator, Tchaikovsky’s music serves as the narrator of the story, the music acting as a very busy and detached mediator of its characters’ situations, feelings, and emotional states. In a letter to his brother Modeste, Tchaikovsky revealed his obsession with Pushkin’s characters themselves, and in a sense, the reason he was inspired to undertake the composition of Eugene Onegin: “Let my opera be undramatic, let it have little action — but I am in love with the image of Tatyana, I am enraptured with Pushkin’s verse, and I am writing music for them because I am drawn to them.” Like all composers, the highly subjective Tchaikovsky particularly needed to feel that strong emotional identification with his characters in order to stimulate the flowering of his musical language. As a result, in Tchaikovsky’s “reinvention” of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin he alters the spirit and tone of Pushkin’s characterizations both textually and lyrically by replacing the poem’s intrinsic dry irony and parody with a lush, serious, and dark sentimentality. In effect, Tchaikovsky’s music deepens Pushkin’s psychological portrait of the characters and transforms them into even more tragic characters. The result is that the score possesses a sense of nervous foreboding, despair, and melancholic nostalgia. Tchaikovsky specifically identified with Tatyana. Seventeen years old when we first meet her in Act I, she is the central figure and focus of the story, a shy, sensitive, romantic, and unpolished young country girl. Tchaikovsky began his opera with Tatyana’s first-act letter to Onegin, setting it to music with an unaltered text taken directly from Pushkin’s original. Tatyana’s tragic flaw is not only that she falls in love with Onegin at first sight, but she falls in love with a horrible dandy who is simply the creation of her own yearnings and fantasies. Tchaikovsky envisioned Tatyana as a provincial “Miss,” young, virginal, and ever seeking some vague ideal that she would strive passionately to grasp. Love comes suddenly to her. Even before Onegin comes on the scene, Tatyana is in love with

Eugene Onegin

Page 20

the heroes of the fictional romances she has been reading. The instant she sets eyes on Onegin, she invests him with all the qualities of her romantic ideal. The love that was previously a creation of her dreams and fantasies immediately becomes transferred to a human being. Tchaikovsky profoundly identified with Tatyana’s romantic yearnings because they were truly a reflection of his own personal sentiments and his own inner psychological weaknesses. Her story is his story, a subjective expression of his own sense of defeat, depletion, melancholy, and utter frustration. She represents his own craving, his own yearning and desire for love, the contentment and emotional fulfillment which the composer could never achieve in his life. Tatyana utterly absorbed Tchaikovsky, and her purely human passion caused him to fall madly in love with her. She became the classic developing heroine who would evolve into exquisite nobility (very similar to the character transformation of Der Rosenkavalier’s Marschallin that overcame Strauss and von Hofmannsthal). Onegin, 19 years old when we first meet him, is the opera’s title character, but he is an antihero, the prototype of that seemingly cold, callous, superfluous man who remains detached from life’s immediacy through self-imposed social and moral codes. Tchaikovsky hated Onegin and was totally unable to empathize with his jaded, caddish, cold, and heartless inhumanity. Tchaikovsky’s musical language is abundantly clear and precise. The music expresses the composer’s indignation toward the Onegin character as well as his unworthiness as Tatyana’s love object. To Tchaikovsky, Onegin was a cold dandy whose detestable, despicable, and disagreeable flawed character, in the moral sense, represented an archetypal example of someone to be disdained, someone who can inflict harm on a human life when his evil and insensitivity interfere in personal relationships. Onegin also typifies a certain skepticism and pessimism that was inherent in aristocratic mores. He is arrogant; he is vain and snobbish; he is a man

Eugene Onegin

Page 21

who believes that his talents set him above the crowd; he is a man representing educated disillusionment, a man frustrated that his contemporary society precludes and does not recognize his talents. Tchaikovsky’s audience, as well as Pushkin’s, experienced a vicarious thrill of revenge at the story’s conclusion when Onegin’s hubris is punished with shame, misery, despair, and even horror. Onegin is never human or tells us what he feels until that very final moment in the opera. He reacts to killing his friend Lenski in a duel by later escaping from reality—or himself. He fails to comprehend Tatyana’s loveless marriage of convenience to Prince Gremin, but most of all, he fails to understand her binding commitment, her vow that she must be faithful to her husband. In the end, Tchaikovsky leaves us with a sense of justice when Onegin becomes shattered after Tatyana spurns him.

T

atyana’s confessional letter to Onegin had an ironic counterpart to events in the composer’s own life, forcing him to wonder if the line between fact and fiction, between fantasy and reality and between life and art had not become blurred. In his art, Tchaikovsky found his heroine Tatyana pouring her heart out to Onegin, the man she had just met, the man she had barely spoken to, the man she reveals that she had dreamed about long before she had met him, the man from whom just one word could set her heart afire—or leave her desolate. At the age of 37, while writing Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky found himself the recipient of a similar revelation of passionate love from an unremembered, 28-year-old former pupil, Antonina Milyukova. Her torrid letters spoke of her personal agony in her tormented love for the composer: “I won’t be able to forget you or stop loving you…I don’t want to look at any man but you…It is not the love of a moment, but a feeling that has been growing for a long time. I simply cannot, and will not, destroy this feeling now.” Antonina’s passionate words inferred suicide, but there was not a word about marriage.

Eugene Onegin

Page 22

Antonina became the incarnation of the fictional Tatyana. Inwardly, Tchaikovsky was sensitive and compassionate, and did not want to spurn Antonina the way the despised Onegin had rejected Tatyana. Antonina’s letters arrived at a particularly vulnerable moment in Tchaikovsky’s emotionally turbulent life and compounded his depression. The more disconsolate he became, the more often he spoke of marriage—but his reasons for even considering a marriage to Antonina concerned his homosexuality, a personal neurosis that haunted and plagued him throughout his life. Tchaikovsky seemed to be motivated by the belief, prevalent at the time, that marriage would be the panacea to stifle the inevitable gossip about him in Moscow’s musical world. As his depression intensified, he expressed greater determination to marry Antonina. Antonina’s letters led to a meeting, and their second encounter resulted in a marriage proposal. The composer developed a profoundly humane sympathy for Antonina, his fictional Tatyana, and he was adamant that he would not render to her the callous treatment of a cold and base Onegin. In his heart, Tchaikovsky could not be Onegin. In Tchaikovsky’s mind, fact and fantasy, reality and illusion had all merged and become blurred. Tchaikovsky married Antonina Milyukova. The disastrous marriage to this emotional, and perhaps neurotic, suicidal woman, was brief. Eventually, Antonina became physically repulsive to him, and he began to feel an irrational hatred and contempt for her. Ultimately, he became tormented with the realization that physical contact with a woman repelled him. The couple soon separated; it was the conclusion to a state of unwedded bliss between a nymphomaniac and a homosexual. That period— the failed marriage to Antonina running parallel to the composition of Eugene Onegin—was one of the blackest periods of his life. As an afterword to the disaster, Antonina bore many children with various lovers, placed them all in orphanages, and in 1896 was committed to an insane asylum in St. Petersburg. She died during her confinement in 1917.

Eugene Onegin

T

Page 23

he action of Eugene Onegin takes place in rural Russia during the 1820s. In the first scene, Tatyana and her sister Olga are heard in the background singing romantically and sentimentally about love, prompting a quartet involving their mother Mme. Larina and the nurse Filipievna, in which the mother reminisces and recollects the past and her youthful dreams of a more aristocratic and stylized life. As peasants arrive to celebrate the autumnal harvest, the atmosphere, both dramatically and musically, is distinctly the spirit of the folk. The ambience of the first scene is intended to show an enfeebled rustic society seeking cultivation. These gentlefolk seek to culturally upgrade themselves by absorbing English and French refinement and sophistication rather than “Russianness.” The English romantic novels had captivated their literary tastes. In many senses, the novels represented for them a form of escapist romanticism, as well as a means to learn propriety. Tatyana mirrors the quest by becoming a passionate and avid reader of these English novels. Through those novels, she has developed an idealized romantic conception of love, a dramatic contrast from the matter-of-fact, if not fickle, attitude of her sister Olga. In 1740, the English novelist Samuel Richardson wrote a volume of letters—almost a guidebook—which served to teach rural persons the niceties of urbane grammar, civilized manners, and the proper way to express themselves. Richardson’s novels explored human feelings, desires, passions, and sentiments. He would present a heroine at her writing table, the exposition of her words an emotional outpouring that would convey to his readers a fictional representation of inner feelings and desires. His style made Rousseau, Lessing, and Goldoni ardent enthusiasts of his novels, and, of course, no doubt provided Pushkin with his model for Tatyana’s letter writing. In Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison—mentioned in the text of the opera— he presents his antihero Grandison to his readers as a prig and prude, a smug man whose despicable behavior represents the antithesis of humility and

Eugene Onegin

Page 24

decency. The example of the character provided an opportunity for those country readers to learn the polite management of life and propriety. Mme. Larina refers precisely to Richardson in the first scene, twice sighing “Grandison ... ah, Grandison!” In the second scene, the 18-year-old romantic poet Lenski and his 19-year-old friend Onegin arrive. Lenski introduces Onegin to the sisters, and Tchaikovsky’s audience— aware of Pushkin— already anticipate the inevitable breakup of Lenski’s engagement with Olga, as well as Onegin’s rejection of Tatyana’s love. While Lenski pours out his passionate love for Olga, Tatyana becomes the shy witness to the dispassionate, cold, unfeeling, tactless, and bored man she has just met: Eugene Onegin. The events are certain, but the wellacquainted audience awaits with breathless anticipation the exciting moment when Tatyana will write her letter. Through their reading of Richardson’s novels, these naïve country folk were taught that letter writing was a proper way to express one’s emotions and feelings. But in the second scene, writing that letter proves to be a more difficult challenge for Tatyana than she had supposed, an arduous task for such a young, naïve, modest, and sexually confused young woman. Tchaikovsky used Pushkin’s exact text, but avoided his narrative which contained descriptions of Tatyana’s erotic excitement when she metaphorically envisioned Onegin as a pursuing bear amid the white snows. Rather, Tchaikovsky focuses our concentration on the difficulty Tatyana has in transcribing her thoughts and expressing what she truly feels. Tatyana starts her letter, tears it up, redrafts opening sentences, and then begins again, continually starting and stopping. Finally, she puts together her gushing—if not embarrassing— declaration. Whatever else Tatyana had extracted from those English novels, she quite misunderstood what they were recommending as maidenly decorum. Her exercise is bound to go wrong. Tchaikovsky builds the music tension to a feverish climax as Tatyana romantically dreams

Eugene Onegin

Page 25

about Onegin, the dream lover of her life, and the agony she feels in her love passions. She plunges recklessly into emotional outbursts of desire and her idealized vision of love. In all, her letter is a pathetic, awkward, and idiotic outpouring of inner emotion. During the letter scene, the motto theme of the opera appears, the oboe against the horns: “Who are you? Guardian angel?” It is the theme heard in the brief prelude, in those drooping, descending scales—a collapsing that symbolizes angst and defeat, a broken soul, as well as a yearning, and a desire for compassion. In the third scene, Onegin’s priggish—if not egotistical—lecture to Tatyana represents a chilling moment in the opera. Onegin offers his arm to Tatyana, a sign of the polite distance between them, but in this context, Onegin’s actions are entirely those of the priggish Grandison of Richardson’s novel. This is a moment that forces the audience to cringe from his brutish arrogance, vain superiority, and blinding egotism. Onegin’s lecture to Tatyana is an insulting, blunt act of cruelty and humiliation. Onegin is Tatyana’s opposite: superior, uncaring, insincere, heartless, and cold. This man possessing self-proclaimed intellect, not emotion, cautions Tatyana to control her feelings lest they be ruinous. Onegin, at 19 years old, is bored with life and love. He has already experienced love and concluded that it is nonsense. He was so bored with Russia that he was going to leave and live with a rich uncle, but the uncle suddenly died and left him independently wealthy, prompting him, for some strange reason, to set himself up in rural life among these boring country people. In Act II, at Tatyana’s birthday party, rural society is presented as the epitome of boorishness and inelegance. Tchaikovsky exposes the divisiveness of society that is built on class structures. The conventions of this society and its inherent civilized behavior were intended to bring people together, but events here prove they work in reverse and really keep them apart.

Eugene Onegin

Page 26

Mme. Larina’s guests are exemplary married persons, right and proper jolly farmers who seem to be incommunicative with their wives. The women gossip profusely, at moments conspiring to match Tatyana with Onegin, even though instinctively they know that it would be handing her over to cruelty and insensitivity. The waltz, a construct to bring lovers together, becomes instead a vehicle to incite quarrelling. Olga flirts with Onegin, which effectively inflames Lenski with jealousy. The code of honor, the last resort of gentlemen when their fellowship is threatened, becomes the means to separate friend from friend. In his rage, Lenski winds up challenging his best friend Onegin to a duel. Uncontrollable passions and feelings forecast tragic consequences to their actions. In the duel scene (Act II, Scene 2 ), Tchaikovsky shows us how quickly a death can be arranged and effected. Lenski is a tragic Tchaikovsky character whom the composer identified with, so the composer pours forth his agonizing romantic feelings and frustrations in poetic cliches that are underscored with magnificently lyrical and poignant music. Lenski’s aria is a tenor’s golden operatic nugget, not so much a test of high notes as a challenge to the singer’s ability to communicate passion. The duel demands social formalities. Onegin and Lenski must turn their backs on each other correctly. Zaretski becomes the agent of society’s insistence on the rules of politeness and correctness in the duel, sublime yet ridiculous proprieties that are indifferent to the horror of the consequences. Onegin and Lenski sing to the same underlying music, but they cannot sing it together. Love has turned to hate as each declares his desire for one forgiving embrace, but each arrives separately at the frustration of his hope. Onegin has the final words, “Nyet! Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!” The duel scene portrays desperation. Can anyone be blamed? Can the callous and indifferent Onegin be blamed for precipitating the confrontation? Can Lenski be blamed for allowing emotion to overpower reason? In the end, the blame

Eugene Onegin

Page 27

could be placed on Tatyana for having a birthday celebration, or even Mme. Larina for holding the party. Nevertheless, it is Tchaikovsky, the narrator of Pushkin’s story, who is announcing that death has become the harsh reality working within the stupidity of society’s conventions, and the result has become an unnecessary tragedy. But for Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin is not to end with the tragic death of Lenski. One of the main themes of this opera concerns misunderstandings and the failure of human communication. Tchaikovsky is preparing his audience for the ultimate paradox: the confrontation between Tatyana and Onegin at the conclusion of the opera and its classic reversal of emotions.

T

he time frame between Acts II and III is seven years. Onegin, after killing his best friend Lenski, made a grand tour of Europe, dodging his own unhappiness and escaping from reality. In Act III, the wanderer and satanic protagonist of the story returns. Act III transports the story from country to city and takes place in St. Petersburg. After Tatyana’s rejections by Onegin seven years earlier, her mother took her to Moscow on a desperate search for a husband—a search, Pushkin tells us, that was financed with considerable difficulty. After all the young men found her dull, she finally succeeded with the elderly Prince Gremin. At Prince Gremin’s ball, the grand polonaise underscores Russian society’s determination to demonstrate their aristocratic sensibilities. They dance an imported Polish grand polonaise; the Russian nobility in those years considered anything foreign superior to anything Russian. Tatyana enters the ball, now a formidable member of the powerful aristocratic establishment. Tchaikovsky now reverses roles as Onegin becomes transfixed by the sight of the beautiful Tatyana; however, he is unable to recognize her in this aristocratic context. Her husband of two years, the 60-year-old Prince Gremin, is Onegin’s friend and cousin.

Eugene Onegin

Page 28

Gremin is a decent landowner who has married the young, romantic Tatyana, recognizing in her all the qualities Onegin was blind to. As his wife, she has become a radiant figure of St. Petersburg society. He has become infatuated with her, and she has provided him with happiness and a renewed sense of youth. Their marriage has become a triumph of love, formality, decency, and class. Gremin politely introduces Onegin to Tatyana. Her response is formal: “I’m charmed to meet you.” Onegin becomes dumbfounded and overcome with shock. Is this the same Tatyana he had spurned? Is he dreaming? Tchaikovsky brilliantly echoes the music from Tatyana’s letter scene, his musical language telling us that now the tables are turned. Onegin has become smitten. Ironically, Onegin now cannot figure out what is wrong and what is stirring within him. Like Tatyana’s letter, he tries to define that magic potion of desire that he is now tasting. In the final scene, Tchaikovsky resolves the reversal of roles. Tatyana holds a letter from Onegin, and it is her turn to deliver a lecture to him about propriety and correct behavior; it is that longed-for moment of revenge. But suddenly, Tchaikovsky removes the structure of the antithesis. Tatyana’s attempt at reciprocal coldness collapses, and she admits to Onegin that she still loves him. The niceties of order and a happy ending to the story have been upset with the irony that the music at this moment echoes Gremin’s aria about his marital bliss. Onegin, in his arrogance and vanity, fancies he can conquer Tatyana. But he has misunderstood Tatyana, and in this story, misunderstandings are the rule, not the exception. At the duel, Onegin and Lenski agonized that they were fighting “to satisfy our honor,” in effect acceding to the demands of convention. But Tatyana did not act under the constraints of society and its conventions when she wrote her infamous letter to Onegin; she was transcending conventions, acting out of feeling, sentiment, and emotion, not reason. Onegin cannot comprehend Tatyana’s sense of honor, a final irony of Tchaikovsky’s retelling of Pushkin’s poem. With almost Wagnerian skill,

Eugene Onegin

Page 29

Tchaikovsky has been feeding us snatches of Lenski’s music, in effect, emphasizing the nobility of love. At the moment of Onegin’s most intense claim that Tatyana belongs with him, ironically Onegin finds himself repeating the separating words from the end of the duel scene: Nyet! Nyet! Nyet! Nyet! But fate has determined that Tatyana will be ever faithful to her marital vows. In this moment of final farewell, Onegin is left in shame, misery, and a full realization of the horror of his life and inhumanity.

W

hat propels Eugene Onegin are misunderstandings. The sentiments of misunderstandings set forth in these “lyric scenes” are all functions of the divisive proprieties that society adheres to: Tatyana’s misunderstood letter; the quarrel between Onegin and Lenski at the party; and Onegin’s travels and too late return. Misunderstandings are the universal truth and focus of Eugene Onegin. This underlying theme of the story explains how disaster awaits human beings involved in different situations when they are misunderstood. Tchaikovsky himself suffered from misunderstandings, particularly regarding his homosexuality, and his effort in Eugene Onegin was to expose the dissension caused by those same misunderstandings that had marked him as a pitiable misfit. Pushkin intended, through his satire and irony, to debunk and to ridicule. Tchaikovsky’s intent was to sympathize and to love. Therefore, Tchaikovsky transformed Pushkin’s characters and placed flawed but colorful human beings on his opera stage, human beings who could spring to life and live and breathe. Tchaikovsky’s life and art were based on an indispensable and unfulfilled need: a yearning for compassion and the satisfaction of human love. In this opera, just as in the composer’s own life, no character truly finds that nobility of sincere love. The tragedy of the opera is the tragedy of an excessive, humanized longing, all expressed by Tchaikovsky’s music—music that is saturated with aching and agonizing frustration. All the characters

Eugene Onegin

Page 30

represent Tchaikovsky’s own self-image; therefore, there is no redemptive conclusion. In Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky bared his own soul to the world and begged for its tears, begged for its compassion, and begged for its understanding. The composer wrote music straight from the heart, a writing filled with pain and rage about his own demons which he could never exorcise. Tchaikovsky remained to his death a prisoner of his own angst.

Eugene Onegin

Page 31

Eugene Onegin

Page 32