EUGEN ONEGIN • PARIS
★★★★☆☆
Photo Guergana Damianova
REVIEW EUGEN ONEGIN PARIS: A BEAUTIFUL WELL-BEHAVED EXPERIENCE
Ralph Fiennes makes his debut as an opera director at the Opéra Garnier with Eugene Onegin – a choice that is both surprising and makes sense. The result is just well-behaved enough.
Fiennes has a long theatre career behind him, and his cinematic experience with Onegin (he played the title role himself in 1999) leaves a clear mark. The direction of the characters is sensitive, dramatic and precise in the opera’s key scenes, but overall the production is characterised by a conservative aesthetic that is beautiful, honest – and a little cautious.
Photo Guergana Damianova
A beautiful but harmless staging.
Fiennes has placed Onegin in Michael Levine’s set design: a ring of birch trees surrounding the stage in a light mist. It is poetic, it is elegant – and it is also a little harmless. When the third act opens in a golden ballroom that would make Donald Trump jealous, it is visually impressive, but still lacking the edge one might have hoped for from a director with Fiennes’ dramatic register.
Photo Guergana Damianova
Each act features a magnificent dance number, and the grand polonaise in the third act unfolds like a Viennese ball in Russian aristocracy. The costumes are lavish, the choreography is classical, and the stage images are so beautiful that the audience almost forgets that they are not being challenged.
Photo Guergana Damianova
Conductor Senmyon Bychkov gets the best out of Tchaikovsky’s wonderful score. The orchestra delivers lyricism, colour and atmospheric images with a richness that makes the evening a musical treat. The musical figures weave in and out of each other with a naturalness that lifts even the most static stage images.
A strong cast of singers.
Russian-Austrian baritone Boris Pinkhasovich is brilliant as Onegin: arrogant, smooth and charming in a way that only people with a good wardrobe can be. His voice is rich, his lines long, and his final desperation is so genuine that one briefly forgets that he himself has created his own misfortune.
Armenian soprano Ruzan Mantashyan is captivating as Tatyana. Her letter scene is the emotional centrepiece of the evening – a gradual blossoming where technical mastery and drama merge.
Photo Guergana Damianova
As Lensky, the young Ukrainian super-talent Bogdan Volkov provides perhaps the most beautiful vocal moment of the evening. His farewell-to-life aria is so beautifully phrased that one almost hopes he will survive. Of course, he does not – but his death hits hard.
Fiennes’ concept is that there is no concept.
Photo Guergana Damianova
At a time when many directors cram classical operas into concrete bunkers, mafia environments or sci-fi universes, Fiennes chooses the opposite: he lets the story be the story. No deconstruction, no provocation, no conceptual superstructure.
That should be liberating. And it is – to a certain extent. But it also feels defensive. When you put a world star like Fiennes at the helm of an opera production, you hope for something more daring. After all, his acting career includes villain roles with far more punch than what unfolds here.
It is all beautiful. It is all melodious.
Four stars from GOT TO SEE THIS for an opera experience that delivers greatly in terms of aesthetics and musical luxury, but does not really sparkle.
