John Cranko’s Onegin was not created on The Royal Ballet (that honour went to Stuttgart Ballet) and London Festival Ballet was the first British company to perform it (in 1984) but it seems to belong at Covent Garden. Now celebrating its sixtieth year, Onegin sits firmly within the Royal Ballet’s rich story-telling repertoire, alongside the full-length legacies of Cranko’s close friend, Kenneth MacMillan, and those of the founder choreographer, Frederick Ashton.
Cranko harboured the desire to make a ballet based on Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin for many years before his directorship in Stuttgart made that possible. It was then that he started to explore the original narrative in Pushkin’s epic poem (essentially a novel in verse). Opera House snobbery deprived Cranko of his wish to use the opera’s music but his ballet does possess a magnificent, descriptive score from (rather than by) Tchaikovsky. More than 70 years after the composer’s death, Cranko engaged Kurt-Heinz Stolze to work with him in arranging diverse extracts of Tchaikovsky’s music to create yet another ballet masterpiece.
Tragedy lies at the heart of Onegin and life imitated art for most of its creators. Tchaikovsky died young, at 53; ironically, Pushkin was killed by injuries sustained in a duel, aged 38; Stolze was just 44 when he died in 1970; and three years’ later, Cranko died – at 45 - on board a transatlantic flight. These creative lives cut short add poignancy to a melancholy tale of infatuation and unrequited love that turns on the axis of a duel in which a cold and conceited man (Onegin) kills his friend (Lensky).
The exceptional expressiveness of Cranko’s fascinating choreography gives virtually every movement in this three-act ballet a wealth of meaning. Four major duets possess an arresting sensuality and romanticism: first, the expression of young love in the tender poetry between Lensky and his beloved Olga; the two major pas de deux between the principal protagonists (Onegin and Olga’s sister, Tatiana), which close the first and final acts; and the duet of security for Tatiana and her husband, Prince Gremin that opens the third act, many years after that fateful duel.
Reece Clarke did a fine job in portraying the younger Onegin as a cold and loathsome man, consumed by arrogance and cynicism, both bored and boring; then as Tatiana’s fantasy lover (he enters her dream through a mirror in perhaps the ballet’s best-known sequence); and, finally, as the pathetic older man, destroyed by his killing of Lensky and now desperate to prize Tatiana away from her married domesticity.
I am running out of superlatives for Marianela Nuñez: she merits at least as many as the countless blooms placed at her feet during this curtain call. Her journey as Tatiana, from the naïve, shy, bookish, young girl at the ballet’s beginning, at first immune to romance and then infatuated by the handsome stranger; through the pain of his rejection; to the maturity of the wife and mother in the final act was never less than perfectly conveyed, both in dance and expressiveness. This performance proved, yet again, what a treasure she is.
It is a dozen years since I first saw Akane Takada dance the role of Olga and (like Nuñez) she was able to convey the youthfulness of her character superbly, particularly in that opening romantic duet and in her high-spirited flirtatiousness with Onegin that leads to Lensky’s fateful challenge. And, in this latter role, William Bracewell was another perfect fit. Lensky’s soliloquy immediately before his fatal duel with Onegin was danced with a moving tenderness that contrasted the required honour of going through with the contest in the certain knowledge that he was about to die at the hands of his more worldly-wise opponent. It was both emotionally and technically outstanding.
Lukas Bjørneboe Brændsrød essayed the upright goodness of Gremin (as a distinct contrast to Onegin) although it seemed to me that he didn’t age between his introduction at Madame Larina’s fateful party and his own ball, many years later. The aforementioned duet between Gremin and Tatiana was beautifully danced by Brændsrød and Nuñez as a relaxed expression of mature love settled into lifelong companionship. A word of praise too for the excellent, experienced cameos of Elizabeth McGorian (Madame Larina) and Lara Turk (Tatiana’s nurse). The ensemble dancing, which is key to all three acts, in Madame Larina’s garden and at the two set-piece functions, was glorious.
Although not created here, Onegin is unquestionably a jewel in the Royal Ballet’s treasure chest and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Wolfgang Heinz, gave an impressive account of a score that has both dramatic power and the eloquence of sensitive intimacy. It was a splendid performance and I’m sure that the long run (it continues until mid-June) will only get better.
