Eugene Onegin review — Opera Holland Park opens season with strong singing

It is always a pleasure to be at the opening of Opera Holland Park’s season on a balmy night, when a golden sunset casts a warm glow over the partly open-air theatre. But turn the temperature down 10 degrees and everybody shivers. Regulars in the audience are glad they packed scarves and blankets.

The company had foresight when it planned this year’s programme. As though knowing that the English weather was going to turn Arctic, the first opera up is Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, a romantic tale of a girl who thrills (in Pushkin’s words) at the “cold perfection of the sky and hoarfrost” of a Russian winter.

What price the extra realism, as the singers started exhaling chill clouds of water vapour? It was a good thing this was one of Opera Holland Park’s strongest opening nights and enough to take one’s mind off impending frostbite.

Skilfully designed by takis, this new production is handsome and atmospheric, all the more effective for being achieved with the minimum of classically elegant, moveable scenery. It also charts the story through colour, starting out all pure-white innocence and progressing to predominantly black, as rejection and despair cause relationships to crumble.

Tchaikovsky cared deeply about Eugene Onegin and wanted performances that were not lavish, had costumes in period and were acted with simplicity. Director Julia Burbach has largely delivered what he wanted. His beloved central characters look young enough, behave like real people and touch the heart. The only directorial conceit is to play some scenes as though in the characters’ minds, so Tatyana imagines Onegin as she writes her letter and he later sees Lensky come back from the dead (though he never shot him in the first place here, which was a real puzzle).

All three principals are past members of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera, which is proving a happy hunting ground. The performance is dominated by Samuel Dale Johnson’s strongly sung, elegantly played Onegin. It is part of this production that the cold-hearted Onegin is less of a cad than usual, more the victim of his own insecurities, which Johnson brings off convincingly.

Anush Hovhannisyan does not have a conventionally beautiful voice for Tatyana, but she is a sympathetic performer and can encompass the greater vocal strength of the mature Tatyana at the close. Thomas Atkins’s singing similarly straddles both Lensky’s intimate softness, albeit without very Russian colouring, and (impressively) his ringing defiance.

The supporting cast includes a warm-toned Olga from Emma Stannard, nice cameos from Amanda Roocroft and Kathleen Wilkinson as Madame Larina and Filippyevna, and a gruff Prince Gremin from Matthew Stiff. The conductor, Lada Valešová, judges the balance with the City of London Sinfonia skilfully, but it would be nice if the chorus could keep in time more often. Their lumpen flouncing in the peasants’ dance is a collector’s item. Perhaps it would be best to postpone those auditions for Swan Lake for the time being.

★★★★☆

To June 25, operahollandpark.com