Eugene Onegin

Tim Ashley
Saturday March 18, 2006
The Guardian

The curtain rises on Steven Pimlott's new production on a dropcloth
depicting a naked man sitting in a melancholy pose atop a cliff. The
homoerotic image serves to remind us that the opera was the work of an
alienated gay man who projected himself into his heroine's psyche in order
to give vent to his sexual feelings.
The dropcloth also tells us, however, that the production is going to
present us with an essentially symbolist take on an opera that cries out
for realism. Pimlott drags discarded images from Pushkin's verse novel
back into the narrative. Onegin takes his name from the river Onega:
Pimlott accordingly sinks a stream into the floor of the stage. Amanda
Roocroft's Tatyana paddles in it after she has dispatched her disastrous
letter. Later, as lives begin to come apart, it freezes over to become the
Neva in wintry St Petersburg where Pimlott stages Onegin's encounter with
the now married Tatyana during a torchlight skating party.
The homoerotics of the dropcloths aren't, meanwhile, brought overtly into
the narrative, though the production places as much emphasis on Onegin's
unravelling friendship with Lensky as it does on his conflicted feelings
for Tatyana. This may be because the performances are exceptionally
strong. Onegin is played by Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Lensky by Rolando
Villazon. Hvorostovsky, a supercilious smirk on his face, is very much the
caddish practical joker, toying with people's emotions until his games
swirl out of control. Villazon is fragile and troubled, naively trusting
in his fellow human beings, only to be destroyed by his eventual
understanding of their inherent cruelty.
Roocroft isn't quite in their league. There are plenty of insights, above
all in the final scenes where she confronts Onegin with bitter anger as
well as regret, though her voice has now has a mature quality that doesn't
make her depiction of the younger Tatyana entirely credible. Conductor
Philippe Jordan, meanwhile, coaxes sounds of subtle sadness from the pit.
Musically much of it is very beautiful but, as a totality, it fails to
cohere.

A) Me muero de envidia, b_alonsoes!!!! cuéntanos!!!!

B) sino porque a mí esto de asociar denudez con erotismo o sexo me parece una chorrada)

The
homoerotic image serves to remind us that the opera was the work of an
alienated gay man who projected himself into his heroine's psyche in order
to give vent to his sexual feelings.

The dropcloth also tells us, however, that the production is going to
present us with an essentially symbolist take on an opera that cries out
for realism.

Pero… todo lo publicado en Internet es susceptible de ser copiado
si yo no quiero que me copien, pues no lo publico en Internet.
¿no?

Pero… todo lo publicado en Internet es susceptible de ser copiado
si yo no quiero que me copien, pues no lo publico en Internet.
¿no?

a mí esto de asociar denudez con erotismo o sexo me parece una chorrada)

Si al menos llevaran cofia...¿Verdad?