Eugene Onegin (the Opera)

This is my first “real” post. That means it’s probably not going to include anything about my personal life or any ranting, thank gracious yes? Most of these posts will be about some type of entertainment. In these type of posts I’m going to have at least a synopsis (MAJOR SPOILERS!!!) and then an analysis (Possible SPOILERS!). Ok here I go!

The first one I’m going to do is on the Virginia Opera’s Performance of Eugene Onegin. I went to see this as an assignment on Friday February 22nd. I was going to go to French class, then hang out at school all day and do work, and then go to the performance at night. But the school opened late that day and we didn’t have French. On the way to the performance I was in a state of dread. I’d wasted the whole day doing nothing and I didn’t want to spend two hours listening to opera. Anyway, was I pleasantly surprised.

Synopsis: Eugene Onegin is basically a classic love story from old Russia. Onegin is a worldly man who moves to the country and befriends a poet named Lensky. Lensky takes Onegin to the house of his fiancee, Olga. There, Onegin meets Tatiana, Olga’s romantic older sister. While Lensky and Olga talk, Onegin and Tatiana take a walk through the country. Tatiana falls instantly in love with Onegin. Onegin and Lensky stay for dinner at the request of the girls’ mother. That night after Lensky and Onegin have left and everyone is asleep, Tatiana spends her night writing a passionate letter to Onegin expressing her love. She gives it to her housekeeper in the morning and the housekeeper takes it to Onegin. Tatiana spends the day waiting for a reply from Onegin. Instead of replying to Tatiana in a letter, Onegin comes to Tatiana’s home and meets with her mother for awhile, as neighbors do. Then he ends up following Tatiana into their garden, where he lets Tatiana know that even though he does love her in a way, it’s not enough for him to be happy in a marriage with her. Then he continues on to advising Tatiana to practice restraint, lest someone else take advantage of her in the future. A few days later, Lensky convinces Onegin to attend Tatiana’s naming day ball. (What? I don’t know what that is either.) Onegin reluctantly comes along with Lensky. While there, he and Tatiana dance while the other attendees at the ball stand around and gossip about the two of them. Onegin gets sick of the talk and becomes angry with Lensky for making him come to the ball. To get back at Lensky, he flirts with Olga. Lensky, as predicted, gets jealous, but unexpectedly challenges Onegin to a duel. Onegin, because of pride or whatever, reluctanly (once again), accepts. The morning after the ball, the two meet and have their duel. They each admit to themselves that they would rather laugh it all off than go on with the duel, but they do it anyway. Onegin ends up shooting Lensky dead and leaves. The scenes change to ten years later. Onegin has come back to Russia after spending ten years abroad. He is at a grand ball at the palace of his cousin, Prince Gremin. There, he sees across the room someone who looks exactly like Tatiana. She has changed from a naive country girl into a sophisticated, high class, aristocratic young woman. He asks his cousin, the prince, who she is, and Prince Gremin introduces her as Tatiana, his wife. Onegin, that very night and ironically, writes a passionate letter to Tatiana professing his love for her. She receives the letter but doubts Onegin’s love. She wonders why he loves her now but not back then, she even goes as far as thinking he wants her for her money and power. Onegin finds her in a room at the palace and falls at her feet, asking her for her love. She, because of her growth into a mature and reasonable young woman, rejects Onegin. She will keep her loyalty for the prince, a hero of Russia and a loving husband, someone who cares and needs her. She ends the opera by leaving Onegin on his knees pining for her and the loss of her love.

Thoughts: Well, where shall I even start? I think I’ll start with the biggest point here. Eugene Onegin is less about love in old Russia, more about the irony of love and how as much as the public and the audience believes that the men in the opera have forfeited love and its power, it’s really the women, those who believed in love from the beginning, who claims that they loved but never really did. (Did that make sense?)

Let’s start with Lensky and Olga. Lensky and Olga couldn’t be more different in character. Lensky is a romantic poet whereas Olga is a childish, fun loving young lady. When Onegin was first introduced to the two sisters he was surprised that his friend would choose Olga over Tatiana, someone who was seemingly more in tune with Lensky. Anyway, at some point during the ball when Onegin flirts with Olga, she doesn’t even consider once Lensky’s reaction and she willingly flirts back. When Lensky admits to Olga that he doesn’t like her dancing with Onegin, what does she do? She promises to dance the next dance with Lensky but ends up ditching him, once again, to dance with Onegin. The main problem I have with these two here is that there is no understanding at all whatsoever. If Olga really loved Lensky, she must have known what type of person he was, a romantic, emotional young man who will get jealous when his fiancee dances with another man, his best friend no less. Then even after she knows that he is somewhat jealous, she, instead of understanding, chides him for even thinking such a thing. Lensky himself isn’t exactly perfect either. He knows that between the two sisters, Olga is the flirty, playful type, so why wouldn’t she flirt with Onegin when he flirts with her? Instead of understanding what type of person she is, he angers her by insisting that she never loved him. To me that point is true, but to her it probably wasn’t. She probably did “love” him, just not really.

Now…Tatiana and Onegin. Tatiana definitely did not love Onegin. That’s for sure. What she did love were her books, her ideas, her fantasies. She saw in Onegin the perfect person to turn into a hero from her novels. She herself reacted to her infatuation the same way that a heroine from her book would have reacted and she then expected Onegin to react the way a hero in her books would have. At first meeting one could tell that Onegin was a refined, worldly man. He wasn’t cruel, he wasn’t cold, but he also wasn’t weak and he definitely did not fall easily. How could she, if she really understood what type of person he was, have expected him to reply passionately to her in another letter? She saw Onegin as a perfect chance for her to live her novels, which can’t be helped because she’s surrounded herself by fantasies for so long, but it was really unbelievable. Now, Onegin. He is not a bad person! Every review, summary, even the notes on the Opera by the lady in charge, was negative! He was made out to be a pompous, arrogrant, cold jerk. I admit that before I went to see the opera, all the summaries and reviews I read led me to believe that he was one of those “the world hurt me so I’m going to hurt the world” kind of person, but he wasn’t like that at all! Maybe it was this certain portrayal of it, maybe in other works he really is a big jerk, but it definitely was not true here. The garden scene is where people point to as proof of his cruetly, but I think otherwise. I’ll also use the garden scene.

What else could he have possibly done, really! He can’t have told her that he loved her, because he didn’t. He tried his best to let her down as kindly as he could, her fault for expecting him to fall at her feet! At moments as he was talking to her, Onegin seemed to be having a conversation with himself. He looked like it was the hardest thing for him to do and the last place he wanted to be was in the garden with her, hurting her. He would clench his fist and look away as if thinking “What am I supposed to say next? What do I do to make this less painful?” The girl put him in the most awkward position ever! His advice about practicing constraint was so called for. She was just the type of person to get carried away, as proven, and she could have very well been taken advantage of. Honestly, I think if I were Onegin I would have reacted the exact same way, if I had the nerve. But I don’t, most people don’t. Most people including myself would have said something along the lines of “Uh…I gotta go. Bye. Forever.” And run away. It took courage to go up to Tatiana and be the “bad guy.”

I’m not saying that Onegin was perfect. He did accept that challenge and end up killing his best friend, but it wasn’t like he brought it on himself. He was surrounded by people who practically expected him to be a certain way, and of course he couldn’t be that way for everybody.

My last point I think is one that would get the most critique if ever I presented it. A lot of audiences say that this opera is about a young man who didn’t know love when it was right in front of him, didn’t realize his feelings for the young lady who loved him until it was too late. I do not agree. This opera wasn’t about love latent until it was too late to be acted upon. No no no no no. No. Onegin did not love Tatiana the first time they had met. He thought of her as a friend, a sister even, but not a lover. Then ten years later he meets her again and he realizes he’d loved her? And loves her even now? And has loved her for the past ten years? What? No way! The thing with Tatiana is that she changed so, so much over the ten years that Onegin spent abroad. She went from a country girl living in fantasy worlds to a sophisticated, educated aristocrat living in a palace with a husband. Those two Tatianas couldn’t be more different. Onegin, I don’t think, is the type of person to fall for two different types of women. His whole life he’s always wanted a cultured young woman as a lover, and that’s what he got ten years after he was abroad. So, I think, that it wasn’t that Onegin loved Tatiana when they first met and just didn’t realize it because he’s an idiot, but rather after the ten years when they finally meet again, THAT is when he fell in love with her. Right then, right there. Not ten years ago in the country. Right there at the palace of the prince ten years after they met, that’s when he fell in love with her for the first time. He’s not some stupid butthead who realized he loved a girl too late, he’s a man who finally found a girl he could love, but too late.

So yea, too late, but two different scenerios. I think audiences and critics use the first, generally accepted scenerio as another way to criticize Onegin, but I don’t think that’s the truth at all. I mean of course it can be, but not to me. To me Onegin isn’t the bad guy who ruined four people’s lives (Tatiana’s, Olga’s, Lensky’s, and his own), Onegin was a man whose life was ruined by three other people and himself.

Overall I really liked the story and I really liked the performance. I liked my interpretation of it and I wasn’t too happy about Onegin’s portrayal from other people, but that’s OK, everyone’s free to think of it as they wished.

I had the chance of sitting next to a very kind old couple. The lady is an opera teacher no less. She told me that this version of the opera was the best she’d seen so far so I’m glad it was this one that I went to. I advise everyone to go see it whether you like Opera or not. It had music (obviously), singing, dancing, “love”, lots and lots of drama…and some cute guys.

Do see it if you ever get the chance, it’s an experience.