Russian grandeur surprises in Columbus, Ohio
America surprises! Again. Yet another city with a fabulous opera house saved from the wreckers’ ball. This time, Columbus, Ohio. A vibrant resident company, Opera Ohio, supported by committed local businesses and arts organisations. No dependency on quango largesse that can be cut off at a whim.
Columbus surprises! Their first ever Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky’s opera about the arrogant sod who snubs the nice girl, flirts with her sister – betrothed to his best pal – kills the affronted best pal in a duel, mopes for five years until he finds out at a glitzy ball that nice girl has married a prince, so has a go at her. She, loyal to her husband gives him the finger. He mopes off. That’s Nutshell Onegin for you.
Sort of. The plot, based on Alexander Pushkin’s 1833 verse novel is a teensy bit more complex than that. A fuller synopsis is here. So, by staging Tchaikovsky’s musically luscious, best-known opera was the Ohio company simply playing it safe? No way. Here’s that surprise. Out of the east comes High Plains director, Rosetta Cucchi, invited to town to paint the familiar Onegin in her own sharp colours.
Then, Cucchi surprises! But that’s no surprise. The director of Wexford Festival Opera always photoshops traditional interpretations. Not for her a simple sleeve tweak, a scandalously repositioned left finger, a blowzily blurred strand of hair. Cucchi always shifts ground big time.
Onegin opens with a symphonic introduction, not an overture. Curtain was already up. The audience could see a still, ill-lit figure framed in her small bedroom, separate from the staged action, looking out at them. This was a completely new character. The opera’s heroine, naïf bumpkin girl who morphs into a princess, Tatyana. Now an old lady, she replays her tragic life, blighted by that fatal childhood encounter in the country with Onegin.
This is daring. Because the addition of the older Tatyana changes the focus of the work completely. No longer disinterested observers, the audience is drawn in, seeing the unfolding events through Tatyana’s eyes. We become complicit. The effect was electrifying.
In current photoshop metaphor-mode it was as shocking as if Harry had been introduced into the Kate-Gate shocker, handing Louis a self-help book from Meghan.
I just must digress. Elephant in room and all that. I am deeply reassured that our Princess of Wales is a duffer at using Photoshop. It’s the creepies who know how to do it, frothing and foaming, who trouble me. A homespun, slightly botched, happy shot of Kate in recovery mode with the three kids? Good on ya, ma’am. Hubert Parry put it better: “I Was Glad”. Get well soon. Thanks for letting us know how you’re getting on.
Back to Mother Russia and balls in the country. Not only are we committed through Tatyana’s eyes. The Cucchi trick adds a post-finale to the plot, giving us an inkling of what happened next. Conventionally, the opera ends with the Princess elegantly snubbing Onegin. Confessing she still loves him, Tatyana chooses loyalty over desire and stays with her much older husband, Prince Gremin, who loves her something rotten.
But the old Tatyana who haunts the action, reaching to and almost touching the characters, signals things ended badly for her. She is, obviously, now a widow, still obsessed with Onegin, ruined by his rejection of her simple letter so long ago. She had poured her soul into that letter, so cruelly mocked by her arrogant object of desire.
To St Petersburg society the country girl had “done good”, snagging her prince. Cucchi recounts a harsher reality. Tatyana is as mortally wounded by Onegin’s arrogance as his one-time bestie, Lansky, was by his bullet in that duel.
Hang on! Here comes another Cucchi twist. There is no stand-off snowy duel, traditionally staged discreetly offstage, the outcome heralded by a cry of “ouch” and a second rushing back, announcing: “Lensky is dead”.
This duel was two rounds of Russian Roulette, Lensky being the loser in round two, atop a long gambling table. The cover of “gentlemen’s honour” that glamourises these encounters was blown. This was High Plains horrible.
How does Cucchi do it? Even the table was a metaphor. A thread that connected everything. At the bucolic opening a happy gathering place for the countryfolk; then a haven of quietude as Tatyana pens her fatal love letter to Onegin; the spot where she, eloquently unmoving – fabulous direction touch here, normally Tatyana dissolves in vapours – receives Onegin’s disdainful rejection of her innocent frankness; then, after a game or two of cards, Lensky’s fatal battleground.
There are so many moments to savour in this fabulous opera. The letter scene aria, when Tatyana pours out her heart to her cynical, but loving nanny, Filippyevna; Onegin’s Act I aria, baring his cynical, restless soul; Monsieur Triquet’s absurdist appearance at Tatyana’s name day party in Act II, the 19th century’s very own Singagram; Lensky’s aria, in which former friend contemplates his impending fate; Prince Gremin’s Act III aria, idolising his wife and her transformation of his life.
I understand Cucchi may, in view of recent developments, revise future productions. Retitling this, Gremin’s only significant contribution to the show, the Rupert aria, in honour of the great media mogul’s (92) latest attempt – with Elena Zhukova (62) – to prove that hope may eventually triumph over experience.
Perhaps not. The Murdoch tale is worthy of an opera all its own. An aria won’t cut it. Journalist and author Claire Atkinson is currently penning the great man’s biography. I’m meeting her soon in Manhattan. Memo to self: introduce Claire to some ambitious composers. Off to the Met we go!
Cucchi set the opera out of period, in what felt like Nikita Khrushchev’s era. No serfs, country workers. Class distinctions less marked. The Bakelite transistor radio being waved around in Act I was a good reference point. The settings were not over lavish, so the production will have been staged within a reasonable budget and is eminently “transportable” to other houses. Smart.
The final scene is staged as a confrontation between Princess Gremin and Onegin in her bedroom, a more utilitarian Ikea feel than the orthodox stylish St Petersburg Eliseyev Emporium look. It is that same bedroom from which Tatyana, now Dowager Princess Gremin, looks out at us at the start, inviting us into her story.
This year Wexford Festival Opera is reviving Risurezzione, a Franco Alfano work, originally staged there by Cucchi in 2017 before she too left as festival director. She also put on La Ciociara last October. Both are fiercely frank presentations of personal relationships and the tenacity of women in adversity. Those insights gave Columbus’ Eugene Onegin a particularly sharp cutting edge.
Voices were excellent. The full cast list is here. But a special shout-out to New Mexican soprano Lydia Grindatto. She sang an epic Tatyana, transitioning from Act I naivety to Act III elegance with ease. I think, just think, mind you, that she will be winging her way to Wexford sometime soon.
Julia Noulan-Mérat, Opera Columbus’ General Director and CEO, seemed to be everywhere. Cucchi, a compadre through our Wexford connection, had kindly ensured I was right royally welcomed in Columbus. Noulan-Mérat, aside from being tolerant of Reaction’s M. Trichet of opera commentary, was clearly thrilled to have Onegin onstage.
We talked about the coming 24/25 season – Threepenny Opera, West Side Story and The Marriage of Figaro. An ambitious mix of the unfamiliar, the wildly popular and traditional classical.
The theatre is simply gobsmacking. Opulent Spanish Baroque, 2,791 seats (very precise) and a 21-foot chandelier. Columbus Association for the Performing Arts – CAPA – whipped locals from every airt and pairt to the cause of saving the historic 1928 former movie palace in 1969.
Columbus is not short of performing space. There is also the Palace Theatre and Southern Theatre. A new symphony concert space is on the stocks. And the orchestral talent Opera Columbus has on tap with their Columbus Symphony partnership is pretty much as good as it gets. The Russian sound world that filled the house on the night was all enveloping.
I will not be surprised by Columbus again. Like that High Plains Drifter of the 70s, Cucchi left town having made her mark, an affirmation that Opera Columbus is an operatic force in the land.
And the annoying spaghetti western meme? Radio 3’s current Composer of the Week is Ennio Morricone, a Cucchi compatriot, responsible for all those 1970’s spag west moody tracks, that advantageously forced Clint Eastwood to remain mostly silent. Next week Donald Macleod is in Venice with Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli. Much safer background music.
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