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Emotional resonance … Tom Shale-Coates as Young Onegin, with Dmitri Hvorostovsky looking on in the title role of Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House, London.
Emotional resonance … Tom Shale-Coates as Young Onegin, with Dmitri Hvorostovsky looking on in the title role of Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House, London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Emotional resonance … Tom Shale-Coates as Young Onegin, with Dmitri Hvorostovsky looking on in the title role of Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House, London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Eugene Onegin review – hero's welcome for exceptional Hvorostovsky

This article is more than 8 years old

Royal Opera House, London
Singing between courses of cancer treatment, the baritone was charismatic and provocative in a cast that transcended Kasper Holten’s confused production

The Royal Opera’s revival of Eugene Onegin marks the return of baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky to the title role, which he hasn’t sung at Covent Garden since 2006. We hear him, however, in unusual circumstances. Earlier this year, Hvorostovsky was diagnosed with a brain tumour, but has continued singing between courses of treatment. His voice remains terrific in its warmth, technical assurance and expressive range, and his performance as Tchaikovsky’s tragically deluded hero is exceptional even by his own high standards.

Terrific warmth … Hvorostovsky. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

His Onegin is charismatic and provocative, yet frightened of his own and other people’s emotions until realisation dawns too late. In the opening scene, he eyes up not only Nicole Car’s Tatyana but also Oksana Volkova’s Olga, already paving the way for the catastrophes he will later cause. When he rejects Tatyana, his fascination with her is still apparent beneath the lofty hauteur. Later, after he has finally acknowledged the depths of his feelings for her, he grovels at her feet. The hero’s reception Hvorostovsky received when it was over was richly deserved.

Yet one wishes that he and the rest of the cast were better served theatrically than by Kasper Holten’s production, deemed messy when first seen in 2013. It has, I gather, been revised, but remains awkward, obfuscating a work that combines narrative simplicity with great emotional resonance. Holten turns it into an examination of the nature of memory and the relationship between past and present. During the prelude, we see Onegin and Tatyana preparing for their final confrontation. The opera then plays itself out in flashback, though Holten gives Car and Hvorostovsky younger doubles, played by dancers (Emily Ranford and Tom Shale-Coates), who carry some of the narrative weight and also, confusingly, suggest the life the couple might have had if things had turned out differently.

An erotically grappling pas de deux nearly unbalances the letter scene, and it’s a measure of Car’s stature as a performer that she quickly regains our attention during its course. She’s a wonderful Tatyana, among the best ever, inhabiting the role with great dramatic and vocal surety. Michael Fabiano makes a fine Lensky – less overtly poetic, more forthright than most – and there’s another strong performance from Ferruccio Furlanetto as Gremin, entirely convincing in his tender affection for his young wife. Semyon Bychkov conducts with great refinement and understated passion.

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