Eugene Onegin on the road: Wild Arts plays Opera Holland Park

At a time when updating settings and applying contemporary morals and attitudes to productions are done in the name of making opera “relevant”, it’s refreshing to see a director take an opera at face value and present it as the touching story it is. That’s just what Dominic Dromgoole, former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, does with Eugene Onegin for Wild Arts, a young Essex-based touring company.

Tchaikovsky insisted that his opera was premiered by students of the Moscow Conservatory and its four principal roles suit young voices very well. The composer also stipulated that the staging need not be lavish but should be kept in period. He would have been satisfied with the results here.

Costumes mostly place the characters in period, there are dances where Tchaikovsky writes dances, and Tatyana even has a bed – a rarity these days – for her Letter Scene. Wild Arts are an industrious band: the cast of ten act as stagehands and nearly all of them double roles or sing as the chorus; the chamber group – single woodwinds and horn plus a string ensemble and timpani – work hard to bring the score to life in conductor Orlando Jopling’s mostly effective reduction.

After touring the show to venues from Colchester to Cambridge, the company steamed into London for its first gig at Opera Holland Park, playing to a sold out house. Sadly, it hit a couple of buffers on the way.

Emerging from the pandemic, as a matter of necessity, OHP wrapped an apron around its reduced orchestra pit space. For better or for worse, that apron has remained. It brings with it two obstacles: a full orchestra cannot be engaged for productions (not a problem when you’ve only a chamber ensemble anyway); and that apron, considering the width of the canopied auditorium, has dead spots. Placing all of the action, bar a single line for Onegin, on the apron was a calculated move that occasionally misfired; when Tatyana and Onegin sang their final scene to each other across the cramped acting space, a good percentage of the audience won’t have heard both singers clearly. The huge OHP stage, meanwhile, was left untouched, a wasteland decorated by white drapes.

The decision to sing the production in English is admirable, although Siofra Dromgoole’s rhyming couplets sometimes clunk and, in the Letter Scene, the word “anguish” is a tough ask on which to end a climactic phrase. Having the orchestral ensemble facing the main stage, with Jopling facing the audience, was not necessarily helpful to the cast. Sticking the interval midway through Tatyana’s name-day party felt odd. Place it after the duel and you remove the problem of how to dispose of Lensky’s body.

Dromgoole’s direction is very busy – characters move around a lot – but not always with a sense of actual purpose. And if you’re going to give Prince Gremin crutches, to show he’s an old soldier who’s seen action, then get him to actually use them properly.

The cast gave it their all though and there was much singing to enjoy. Galina Averina sang Tatyana with a bright gleam and a dignified presence, holding the audience rapt in her Letter Scene. Timothy Nelson impressed in Onegin’s less haughty moments – letting down Tatyana with touching sincerity – and crumpled effectively on killing his best mate. Xavier Hetherington sang Lensky with ardour; a shame he pushed his tenor a bit too hard in his poetic aria. Emily Hodkinson’s Olga felt too matronly. The best singing came from old hand Sion Goronwy, his grave bass adding nobility to Gremin’s paean to finding love in his twilight years. That was pure class.