I had tickets to see Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in Vienna when it dawned on me — I'd never even read Eugene Onegin. I wouldn't watch a movie without I had tickets to see Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in Vienna when it dawned on me — I'd never even read Eugene Onegin. I wouldn't watch a movie without first at least attempting to read the book, so why should an opera be any different, particularly when the source material is written by the great Alexander Pushkin — practically the Russian Shakespeare!
In many ways, "Eugene Onegin" is a classic tale — but that may largely be due to Pushkin's role in helping to shape what we know of as the classic tale. But in other ways, it's also very different from the sorts of stories we see in literature and films today. For one — spoiler alert — there's no happy ending.
To call "Eugene Onegin" a tragedy doesn't feel quite right, but it is a tale of ennui, of regret. It pairs remarkably well with Knut Hamsun's The Wanderer, in that it's about a seeker — a man who's drifting from place to place in the hope that the journey will eventually provide what he finally understands he's been lacking his whole life. The search, in both stories, ultimately does provide answers, though in Onegin's case the answers come much too late....more