February marks the 175th anniversary of Alexander Pushkin’s death. Shot in a duel at the age of 37 on 10 February 1837, the great Russian poet and founder of modern Russian literature ended his life like one of his characters: Lenski is being shot by his friend Eugene Onegin, the (anti-) hero of the verse novel of the same name, a conflict born out of jealousy on the side of Lenski and ennui on the side of Onegin who flirted with Lenski’s beloved just to overcome his boredom. In real life, Pushkin challenged his brother in-law Georges d'Anthès to a duel after rumours that Pushkin’s wife had started a scandalous affair with him. The duel left both men injured, Pushkin mortally who died two days later. Life imitating art…
Pushkin's works provided fertile ground for Russian composers: Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila is the earliest important Pushkin-inspired opera, and a landmark in the development of Russian music. Tchaikovsky's operas Eugene Onegin (1879) and The Queen of Spades (1890) became perhaps better known outside of Russia than Pushkin's own works of the same name, while Mussorgsky's monumental Boris Godunov (two versions, 1868-9 and 1871-2) ranks as one of the very finest and most original of Russian operas. Other Russian operas based on Pushkin include Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri, Tale of Tsar Saltan, and The Golden Cockerel; as well as Rachmaninov's The Miserly Knight.
A few decades after publication of Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky adapted Pushkin’s famous verse novel as ‘lyric scenes’ and Opus Arte will release a spectacular new production of the opera on DVD and Blu-ray in March. Here Eugene Onegin receives an inspired reinterpretation from the Norwegian director Stefan Herheim. His productions create controversy and excitement around Europe, and he takes Pushkin’s story of illusion, disaffection and frustrated love, and places the protagonists – world-weary Onegin and naïve, passionate Tatyana – in a triple temporal perspective, referencing the theatrical present, the period of the work’s composition, and the pageant of Russia’s history. Mariss Jansons, renowned for his mastery of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, conducts this performance from Amsterdam’s Muziektheater.
‘Put too much steam into Tchaikovsky’s score and it wilts. Be too shy and retiring, on the other hand, and the tragic momentum evaporates. Jansons sets us on a simmer and gradually turns the heat to boiling. It is magisterially paced, stunningly played and, seemingly effortlessly, Jansons captures every aching nuance. […] Herheim’s innovations are often throbbingly acute (and sometimes wickedly funny).’
The Times