Eugene Onegin: A Late Bloomer

 The Met’s successful 2026 revival of Eugene Onegin prompts recall of the opera’s New York history. While Tchaikovsky’s “lyrical scenes” (the composer-named genre) entered the repertoire of some of Europe’s leading theatres soon after its 1881 Bolshoi premiere, they made little impact across the Atlantic until the English-language revival in 1957. Heard only 8 times at the Met, in Italian, between 1919 and 1921, Eugene Onegin has surpassed 150 repetitions since then, a growing total higher than company stalwarts such as Elektra or Pelléas et Mélisande. In 1978 the score finally gained its original Russian text.

The Met’s most recent Tatiana is Asmik Grigorian. Equal to the heroic demands of Elektra and Turandot, she scales her sumptuous voice to the intimate scale of the composer’s lovelorn heroine. In this clip from a 2020 Berlin performance, the “Letter Scene” captures Grigorian in a searing exposure of the vulnerability, the confusion, and the uncontainable passion of a young woman’s first love.

 Tatiana’s letter elicits a cruel response. A smug bachelor, the bored Onegin humiliates the naive girl for her candor and declares he could only love her as a brother. Here is the peerless Pavel Lisitsian in the baritone’s Act I scold.

The most famous excerpt from Eugene Onegin is the tenor’s “Kuda, kuda.” Lenski, offended by his best friend’s flirtation with the poet’s beloved Olga, has challenged Onegin to a duel. Facing death, Lenski bewails the passage of his golden years. In this 1937 clip, Ivan Kozlovsky, the leading tenor at the Bolshoi from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s (his only rival, for the same roles, was Sergei Lemeshev) lends his plangent, effortlessly high-pitched voice and his deeply felt emotion to this heartrending expression of regret and despair.

 

Act III transpires several years later. Onegin, recently returned to St. Petersburg, attends a ball where he meets Prince Gremin, now Tatiana’s husband. The composer rewards the singer with a rare gift--a love song for the opera bass. With upmost sincerity, Gremin praises his wife and declares that she has immeasurably enriched his life. László Polgár, whose rich European career was, alas, rarely punctuated by engagements in North American, rolls out his rich voice with uncommon subtlety in a 1995 Budapest concert.

 

YouTube abounds with terrific excerpts and full performances of Eugene Onegin. Search, among many others, the Tatiana of Renée Fleming, Makvala Kasrashvili, and Ljuba Welitsch, the Onegin of Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Yuri Mazurok, the Lensky of Nicolai Gedda and Sergei Lemeshev.

P.S. Here is the unbelievable, and unbelievably moving bass Mark Reizen as Gremin, returning for a Bolshoi birthday tribute at the age of 90—yes ninety!!!