"Eugene Onegin" at the National Arts Centre

There are many things that appear foreign to a contemporary Canadian audience about Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's opera, Eugene Onegin.

The story is based on Alexander Pushkin's verse novel, published serially from 1825 to 1832, and the opera was composed by Tchaikovsky in Russian in 1877. The language, not often heard in opera, and significantly different even from the French or other Romantic languages that many Canadians are familiar with, raises a potential barrier to understanding.

(My brother, when he worked in a video rental store as a teenager, said that customers asking for the film version would often pronounce it "One Gin," as if they were ordering a drink. It should be pronounced "On-YAY-gin," with a hard "g.")

Another complexity is the fact that Tchaikovsky did not intend for this piece to be an "opera" - he described it as a series of "lyric scenes." This is evident in that the events depicted and sung about jump frequently in time and place, leading to several lengthy pauses in the action as the curtain comes down and the set is changed; and a rather episodic approach to the story-telling.

Yet a third obstacle is presented by the mixture of the dark, moody, typically Russian story - full of unrequited love, betrayal and murder among friends, and sad, unfulfilled lives - with the extravagantly expressive form of Romantic opera. It's one thing to see Hamlet muttering away in some dark corner of the stage - quite another to see the shy, love-tortured Tatiana sit in her small bedroom, open her mouth wide, and belt out a spine-tingling aria about her desperate love for Eugene.

The National Arts Centre's performance of Eugene Onegin, however, demonstrated how all - or most - of these problems can be overcome.

For a start, the music is fantastic. Tchaikovsky's lush, tremulous string passages, and simple but richly varied melodies are invariably pleasing; and the execution of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Opera Lyra Chorus, and the soloists - particularly Russell Braun as Onegin, Inna Dukach as Tatiana, and Richard Troxell as Lenski - was superb.

The language problems are virtually negated both by the presence of surtitles in English and French, and the extreme emotionality of the music. One is never in doubt as to what a character's feelings are at any point in the story.

The many pauses in the opera, between scenes and acts, were a slightly more tricky issue to deal with. During each of the three acts, there was about a five-minute pause (you can tell it's a pause because the word "PAUSE" is projected above the stage), during which the lights were kept down, and the rumbling of furniture and props could be heard from behind the curtains. Unfortunately, the darkened theatre hindered the people-watching that can normally be used to pass the time at the NAC.

Also, during the intermissions between the acts, line-ups at the washrooms and the bars left only a minimal amount of relaxation time. It's a bit disconcerting to be shunted immediately from the dramatic world presented on stage to the foyer, surrounded by well-dressed people milling around aimlessly like cattle. (It made me wish I lived during the earlier days when operas were the settings for love affairs and duels among the audience just as much as for the fictional characters.)

And as for the seeming contrast between the darkness and inwardness of the story and the all-or-nothing melodrama of the opera form - it turns out to be, in fact, a perfect pairing. The story hinges on numerous intimate scenes - two old women talking about youthful love; young couples flirting; a love-stricken woman alone in her room, writing an impassioned letter to a callous man; friends conversing and disputing with each other. The occasional imposition of a big production number, in the form of a peasant dance, or a military ball, only heightens the sense of tension between the characters' internal worlds and the vibrantly colourful and noisy society around them. The exuberant singing and dancing of the peasants in the first scene only makes it all the more poignant when Tatiana sits alone in her cramped room in the second; and the elegant and refined ball of Act III, Scene 1, perfectly contrasts with the raw torment Eugene Onegin then displays in the electrifying final scene in Tatiana's bedroom - when the woman he initially disdained, but whom he has over the years come to realize that he loves - tells him that she must reject him.

So, even though the language (Russian), the society on display (close to feudal), and the mode of communication (loud singing) are unusual, the characters and their relations to each other are very familiar to us. Combined with Tchaikovsky's compositional genius and the high quality of the National Arts Centre's production, it makes for not only an entertaining evening, but also a richly engaging one.

Eugene Onegin will be performed again on Monday, April 6, Wednesday, April 8, and Saturday, April 11.

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