View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (June 1999, week 1) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 00:04:01 +0000 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: Eugene Onegin, Lyric, Hammersmith, 1Jun99 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tatiana Liza Pulman Olga Thomasin Tresize Madame Larina Gaynor Miles Filipyevna Evette Davis Lensky Simon Butteriss Onegin Darryl Knock Triquet Kieran Creggan Gremin Stephen Tate David Firth, Tim Bruce Director Tony Britten Music director Nicholas Bloomfield Music Theatre London MTL's Eugene Onegin is set in a Brideshead version of England. (Or maybe Maurice -- the flashbacks to Lensky and Onegin's happy days together were filmed in Cambridge.) The first two acts are set in an English country house in 1930, with Lady Chat peasants and a hunt ball. The third act is set in London in 1940, with Onegin a declasse officer and Gremin a decent old general. The idea is fine, not only because the ambivalent bond between Lensky and Onegin can be seen as being similar to that between Charles and Sebastian, but also because Charles' golden memory from a world gone to pot is similar to Onegin's final regret. (This production has Onegin and Lensky explicitly as former lovers.) Unfortately, Onegin is much more "operatic" than most of the works MTL have tackled in the past. The key scenes -- Tatiana's letter, Lensky's nostalgia -- depend on singing as much as any bel canto scena. Not that Liza Pulman didn't put everything into the letter scene. And Simon Butteriss was very moving in Lensky's last aria. But it all went on too long in music designed for vocal excess more than drama. In contrast, Cosi turned out (surprisingly) to be performable as drama, with updated dialogue instead of recitative, and arias and ensembles intact. And Die Fledermaus (not at all surprisingly) worked out fine as a contemporary farce with patter songs and ballads. The characterizations were amusing, though. Thomasin Tresize was a Joan Hunter Dunne of an Olga. Liza Pulman started out girlier, gauche and dreamy, and always with her nose in a book, and ended up disengaged and Claudette Colbert-elegant. Simon Butteriss was a tweedy Lensky, never obviously a poet, initially a P.G.Wodehouse twerp but showing more intelligence as his agony increased. His singing was generally something like that of a chap who can be induced to give a tenor aria at social gathering. Darryl Knock was good and supercilious as Onegin, something like an unpleasant Ronald Coleman. He was obviously expensively dressed at all times in the first two acts, which made his military fatigues in act three humiliating. Unfortunately, his singing seemed close to non-existent. The single set consisted of sliding windows looking out on mist, with steps in front down to the stage. A rectangular screen, in a similar art deco style to the set, came down for projections in each intermezzo. The "home movies" of Onegin and Lensky at college during the prelude to the duel, and Lensky and Olga viewed by a wrecked Olga from a wheelchair before the final scene, were particularly moving. The small ensemble (piano, wind, cello and bass) gave an impressive account of the score in an arrangement that didn't try to produce the sweep of a full orchestra. Regards, Helen - H.E. Elsom he@helsom.demon.co.uk http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.