It is Stéphane Braunschweig who signs the staging of one of the favorite Russian operas, according to Pushkin. Originality: for this work so anchored in the country where it is located, excellent French singers come to support the Russian duo of the two sisters. The conductor Karina Canellakis, also with Russian roots, holds the baton of this masterpiece.
Eugene Onegin, it is the Russian soul!
At the second scene of Eugene Onegin –the choir of peasants who come to offer Madame Larina ears of wheat and raspberries, accompanied by song and dances (With pleasure, little mother! Let’s entertain the mistress) -, one could not help but think of the way in which Tchaikovsky was perceived in French musical circles fifty years ago: a bourgeois and backward-looking composer, Westernized, unlike his contemporaries in the group of 5, with an authentically Russian spirit. (the opera-symbol: Boris Godunov by Moussorgsky, moreover a masterpiece and a page in the history of Great Russia) What was it, what was it Eugene Onegin, this sentimental story, compared to a reflection on autocratic power, from the tsars to Stalin?
The nanny (Delphine Haidan), Madame Larina (Mireille Delunsch) and Olga (Alisa Kolosova) C) Vincent Pontet
We have had the answer for some time now, but not that long. Eugene Onegin, it is the Russian soul. From the lower classes, from the bourgeoisie, from the upper echelons, this exalted sentimentality which oscillates permanently between joy and despair. In this ambiguity nestles the richness of this history where one is not either among the great authors whom the French will quote first – Dostoïevski, Tolstoï – but with Pouchkine. Pushkin, the beloved poet, whose verses all Russians know by heart, whose walls of Moscow are studded with plaques reminding him that he passed this way or that way (it is barely if we do not read: Here Pushkin ate pirojki on a certain day)
The lovers: Lenski (Jean-François Borras) and Olga (Alisa Kolosova) C) Vincent Pontet
A motionless and frozen society
With, too, an additional ambiguity (and here we are already touching on Braunschweig’s staging) than a Chekhov-style atmosphere, which Braunschweig, current director of the Odeon-Théâtre de l’Europe, has created a lot, where we can guess the collapse of an old world, justifiably justified on the date, 1878, when Tchaikovsky wrote his opera, but obviously much less at the time when history takes place, 1820, in the time of Pushkin. Otherwise to reinforce the idea (but this does not necessarily interest the director, who plays the timeless) of an immobility of this society, an immobility that will last a hundred years. Braunschweig insists much more, by putting forward Onegin the Solitary as spokesperson, on the profound boredom of this provincial life where the prospect of a ball after all modest is enough to make this small world believe that we are at the court of the tsars!
Monsieur Triquet (Marcel Beekman) in front of resigned Tatiana (Gelena Gaskarova) C) Vincent Pontet
A very young girl falls in love
So a dreamy young girl, a great reader of love stories, Tatiana, sees the fiancé of her sister Olga, Lenski, arrive at her mother’s property, accompanied by a rich friend, Onegin. Tatiana immediately falls in love with Onegin, who will gently (therefore cruelly) push her away, claiming that he is not made for marriage. A sentimental misunderstanding and the two friends become irreconcilable enemies, to the point that Onegin kills Lenski in a duel. A few years later, Onegin, returning from a forced exile, meets Tatiana by chance, now Princess Grémine, realizes that it is she whom he loves; but between her own heart, still in love, and her duty, Tatiana chooses the dignity of being faithful to the old prince who took her in.
Lenski (Jean-François Borras) against Onéguine (Jean-Sébastien Bou) in front of Larina (Mireille Delunsch) and Olga (Alisa Kolosova)
Infinite melodic richness
Everything is in the delicate feeling, the subtlety of the emotions, this so particular psychological richness (we are not with Marivaux, but perhaps with Musset, without the lyrical impulses of the French) And anyway, musically, nor with Wagner nor with Verdi (never the great organs!), rather in the subtle Mozartian elegance that Tchaikovsky admired at a time when Mozart was a little in purgatory. With this infinite melodic richness which is the main mark of Tchaikovsky (the melody, what a horror! We thought fifty years ago) and which culminates in the three major arias of the work: the admirable one from the letter that Tatiana wrote to Onegin, built almost Mozart-style (recitative and aria), that (Kouda, Kouda) where Lenski bids farewell to life, and finally that of Prince Grémine where he explains how a white haired warrior can find himself trapped in love (and this also explains Tatiana’s final renunciation)
Prince (Jean Teitgen) and Princess Grémine (Tatiana-Gelena Gaskarova) C) Vincent Pontet
A conductor attentive to instrumental work
These three magnificent tunes (that of the letter lasts almost a quarter of an hour) answer each other under the baton of Karina Canellakis, often with these woodwind counterpoints which prolong the melody – and the woodwind desk of a French orchestra, in this case that of the national de France, excellent , is most of the time an absolute happiness. A Canellakis always attentive to bring out the song, the different voices of the instruments (Tchaikovsky, great orchestrator), perhaps by not emphasizing the contrasts enough in a rather long first act, but this changes then, when the plot , moreover, becomes much more tense, dramatic.
Nice Franco-Russian distribution
Vannina Santoni (also of Russian origins) was to sing Tatiana: a happy event imminent will have prevented it. Gelena Gaskarova, who has sung the role a lot at the Marinsky in Saint Petersburg but also in Nantes or Toulouse, is a very beautiful Tatiana, with a voice that is not always sonorous but very well planned. The air in the letter is magnificent, it makes sensitive the feelings which jostle in it; and she very subtly succeeds in embodying both the romantic young girl and the haughty and hurt princess, by the grace of a detail, a bearing of the head … (we remember an Anna Netrebko sometimes struggling to represent a teenage girl! )
Lenski (Jean-François Borras) bidding farewell; Tatiana (G. Gaskarova) prostrate C) Vincent Pontet
The joyful Olga of Alisa Kolosova, with the beautiful tone of mezzo, is very good, Jean-François Borras embodies with chest and a sacred presence a rather unusual sanguine Lenski. It’s a role-taking, it’s perfect. Jean-Sébastien Bou has already sung Onéguine. A sharp, almost metallic voice, he gradually reveals himself as a lonely romantic, suffering from a sickness that breaks out even better in the last act (with the weight of the crime that continues to haunt him). The two ladies, Mireille Delunsch, the mother, and Delphine Haidan, the moving nanny, are very well, despite the sometimes bitter highs at Delunsch. And we have a lot of fun with the improbable accent of Marcel Beekman in Monsieur Triquet, this old French immigrant who sings an old-fashioned tune, moreover closer to Grétry than to Mozart. Finally, Jean Teitgen en Grémine has above all to defend his air and he does it so well that fair applause crackles after the last notes. Good performance also from the choirs of the Bordeaux opera. We should also note, even if one is not a Russian-speaker, for having listened to or heard Russian, however, that all these French people really seemed to do honor to Pushkin’s language and text.
Princess (Gelena Gaskarova) and Onegin (Jean-Sébastien Bou) C) Vincent Pontet
A staging haunted by death and failure
Braunschweig’s staging leaves us a little more reserved. We know Braunschweig modest, enemy of excess. The first act, with its decoration of bulky and rather ugly white chairs, drags a little, so much the representation of boredom, when it is not nourished, can … boring. Remarkable idea, in any case, to make Gaskarova insist, in the air of the letter, on all the words which incite Tatiana to foresee the failure of her attempt at love, foreshadowing that in the scene of the ball she becomes a sort of dead man. – alive, frozen in front of an almost indifferent Onegin. Likewise Lenski’s aria is totally the farewell of an already-dead man, in the manner of Werther, but Braunschweig hoists Borras on a sort of roof, preventing him from nourishing his despair with a color chart of gestures or ‘questions. The ball scene has a Balzacian cruelty, so Lost illusions, the beautiful film by Xavier Giannoli, and we recognize there the Braunschweig true man of the theater, with this way (also in the final act) of placing an Onegin always alone in the middle of the crowd, almost a vampire lit by a bad light in the land of the living.
Murderous Onegin (Jean-Sébastien Bou) C) Vincent Pontet
The picture of a society, to the detriment of the characters
We do not always understand everything, like the opening of Act III with these characters who are blindfolded: blind society (a heavy symbol then!) Or reminiscent of the Eyes Wide Shut of Kubrick, but why? Likewise (and here it is a deliberate choice) at no time does one doubt that Tatiana, faced with a distraught Eugene, will remain faithful to her duty. We are far (see on DVD at Deutsche Grammophon) from the flamboyance of a Netrebko and a Mattei where Tatiana, overwhelmed with love, repeats to Onegin a No no no haggard while his body lets itself be carried out of his palace by his feelings.
In the end, therefore, this is the criticism that we will make of this elegant staging, even if we do not like the sets (intelligent work, on the other hand, on the costumes!): To paint us the picture of ‘a society, as with Chekhov, a little to the detriment of a very subtle psychological work devolved, finally, as much as possible, to the singers, who often succeed but not always.
Eugene Onegin by Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, directed by Stéphane Braunschweig, musical direction by Karina Canellakis. Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, next performances on November 13, 15, 17 and 19 at 7:30 p.m.
Also broadcast on France Musique on December 25 at 8 p.m.
Greetings. In the center, Karina Canellakis C) Vincent Pontet