Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular Eugene Onegin received its 1879 premiere not at the Bolshoi or Mariinsky, but rather by the students of the Moscow Conservatory. Heartbeat Opera, New York City’s most resourceful company, gets closer to the spirit of the work than most, with a young cast and minimal sets.
The major conceit of Dustin Wills’ production is to highlight the sexual relationship between Onegin and Lensky. In Act 1, Lensky sings his love paean directly to Onegin rather than to Olga, and a backroom hookup between the two triggers the fateful duel. There’s no denying that Tchaikovsky’s score is full of unresolved longing and reading homoerotic subtexts in Tchaikovsky’s stageworks isn’t exactly new – Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and Krzysztof Warlikowski’s so-called “Brokeback Onegin” had similar ideas.
This approach works best in the duel scene, with the silhouettes of both men projected onto a white cloth as they sing about what could have been, but it doesn’t work quite as well in the final scene as Onegin sings his lines to the dead Lensky while Tatyana sings hers to nobody in particular.
Wills’ sets are simple but effective, a large wooden frame functioning as Tatyana’s room, a large banquet table and a proscenium stage. Sets are moved on and offstage before our eyes, whether out of necessity or by design, and Wills adds an element of meta-theatre by having the final scene play out on a stage-within-a-stage. Onegin leaves Tatyana alone onstage as the rest of the cast sits and watches – a comment on performative society and sexuality? It’s an intriguing idea, but with such a busy production, it’s one concept too many.
Musically we are on far more secure territory, led by Jacob Ashworth as both conductor and first violin. Daniel Schlosberg’s arrangement for nine musicians captures the essence of Tchaikovsky’s score, with balalaika and saxophone adding fascinating new colour. It’s not a straight transcription – there are eerie, dissonant passages with gliding electric violin and guitar accompanying the singers, creating a nightmarish atmosphere. Triquet’s couplets, reassigned to Olga, veer from cabaret act to horror movie – it’s different and unexpected, but it really works.
The ladies led the vocal honours, from Tynan Davis’ confident Filippyevna, far younger than usually cast and acting as a sort of stage manager, to Shannon Delijani’s luscious, plummy Larina. Sishel Claverie was a vivacious Olga, both vocally and dramatically, with a smoky, pungent mezzo. But the undoubted highlight of the evening was Emily Margevich, singing Tatyana with an assurance that could easily grace any major stage. Margevich has a creamy lyric soprano with just the right amount of metal for this repertoire. While she was impressively powerful in the final scene, it was the radiant pianissimi of the letter scene that proved her a star in the making.
It was almost a shame that the production focused so much on its male leads given Margevich’s star power and that Tatyana was often left here to her own devices. Tenor Roy Hage’s Lensky was the true tragic hero of the production, and he brought a powerful tenor to the role. He’s a committed actor with an exciting ring to his voice, pushing himself to the very boundaries of vocal control in his fight with Onegin. But he’s also capable of some wonderfully nuanced singing, showing off his breath control and soft singing in his big aria. Lloyd Reshard Jr is given little to do as Gremin – unexplicably shorn of half his aria – but revealed a pleasant, flexible bass-baritone. It’s easy to see why Edwin Joseph was cast in the title role; he’s a wonderful actor, with enough dangerous charm to understand why both Tatyana and Lensky fall for him. But his light lyric baritone, beautiful as it is, didn’t have sufficient heft for his big arias.
Shorn to 100 minutes with no intermission, this is as bold a reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s opera as one can expect to see in New York. But there’s plenty to enjoy musically and dramatically, and a surefire hit for New York's most innovative opera company.
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