Eugene Onegin

You missed when a flock of other chairs joined their fellows, and then in the second half when the set design budget stretched to some trestle tables.

I didn’t care for the production itself, but Liparit Avetisyan’s Lensky’s aria was worth the price of admission for me by itself up in the slips (where you can see less of the set or lack thereof anyway…)

There was a beautiful production on the BBC 30 years ago. Very understated. Simple sets. Enough to give a sense of time and location. But also enough space for the characters and relationships to shine.

My introduction to the piece and the one I keep going back to.

You don't need huge sets but you do need a proper framework for the action.

Elena Prokina, Tatiana
Wojciech Drabowicz, Onegin
Andrew Davis
Glyndebourne

There are some very grainy clips on YouTube but can't find the entire recording

One day I might get my dream to sing Monsieur Friquet. Such a lovely cameo.

Is the director still thinking he is working at Lyric Hammersmith? The production is totally lost in the ROH. I liked it but i was fortunate to be in the good seats.

The singers are often underpowered. No set means the vocal sound is lost unless they are very near the front of the stage.

An uneven evening.

Saw this last night and to begin with I thought the production was OK. True there’s no set as such but the ‘stage pictures’ were agreeable enough and I liked the lack of fuss about it all. Things started to go down hill with Tatyana’s famous letter scene which she dictated to Olga rather than writing herself. Then things went from bad to worse with the Lensky - Onegin duel scene where he commits suicde instead of being shot by Onegin. Worse still at the end of the scene he stands up, bows to the audience and sits on a chair at the back of the stage for most of the ensuing opera. All the ball scenes were horribly staged with laughably inadequate choreography. I really thought this couldn’t be worse than the Holten production it replaced but I think it’s a score draw.

Musically it was OK. Kristina Mkhitaryan had too mature a sounding voice for the early stages of the opera - the letter scene dragged. Christophe Mortagne was awful as Triquet and, as always, Dimitry Belosselskiy stole the show in Gremin’s stonking aria. Best of all, overall was Lipart Avertisyan as Lensky.

I first saw Eugene Onegin in 1978 in the superb Peter Hall production with fabulous sets by Julia Trevelyan Oman and frankly every production since has got worse until we’re left with this lacklustre effort. Thank God there’s Cranko’s ballet later in the season to look forward to.

Just returned my tickets for this. I've never seen Onegin but it sounds horribly like I wouldn't be seeing a representative production anyway. Between that and my forced cancellation of Pet Shop Boys when I had Covid, Covent Garden is holding rather a lot of my money at the moment!

It’s such a shame ROH can’t put on a decent production. It’s a superb opera, definitely in my top five off all the repertoire but the varied scenes really do need some cash splashed to do them justice and even with top prices at £270 they can’t seem to provide that these days.

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Thank you!