Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
✭✭✭✩✩
by Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, directed by Nicolette Molnár
Opera Ontario, Hamilton Place, Hamilton;
January 27, February 1 & 3
Centre in the Square, Kitchener, February 9
“An Excellent Onegin Meets an Tepid Tatyana”
Though it is the ninth largest city in Canada, Hamilton has the country's fourth largest opera company after Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Opera Hamilton (now Opera Ontario) began life in 1980 presenting solely Italian operas. Eventually, it performed its first French opera ("Carmen" in 1986), its first German opera ("Die Zauberflöte" in 1996), and in 1999 its first American opera ("Susannah"). Now in its 22nd season, the company is presenting its first Russian work, "Eugene Onegin", the most popular of Tchaikovsky's ten operas.
At the performance I attended, the opera, for a number of reasons, did not catch fire until the second of its three acts. First, it struck me that conductor Daniel Lipton consistently chose tempi a degree or two slower than ideal. This did not affect the pastoral first scene where the characters are introduced, but seemed to dampen the excitement of the following Letter Scene and of the third scene when Tatyana is rebuffed by the man she has fallen in love with, Onegin. At the same time the strings of the Hamilton Philharmonic seemed to have difficulty with the numerous runs Tchaikovsky uses to signal pangs of emotion. The chorus, too, though producing an authentically rich Russian sound and with excellent diction, seemed underpowered in its initial appearances.
The primary flaw, and one I feared would undermine the whole opera, was the performance of Lisa Houben as Tatyana. Hers is a rich, darkly coloured soprano. Her character is supposed to be a shy, unworldly girl whose ideas of love come entirely from romantic novels. Houben's reticence seemed quite natural in Scene 1 when we first meet her. In the subsequent Letter Scene, when Tatyana cannot sleep because of the turmoil of emotions she feels after having met the enigmatic Onegin, Houben's continued reticence was completely contrary to what the scene demands musically and dramatically. Houben offered a careful singing of the words and notes, but provided virtually no characterization in the one scene when Tatyana fully expresses herself. There was no hint of the "reckless passion" she says she feels nor of her doubts about Onegin's character. Usually, it is this tour de force for soprano that sets the opera ablaze, but in this case there was smoke but no fire. As a result, in the following scene, it seemed quite natural that Onegin should reject her as too young to know what love is and too low in status for a man like him. Without a sense of how completely Tatyana has laid her emotions bare in the letter, we can't really appreciate how crushing a blow Onegin deals her with his cool rejection.
Fortunately, from the second act onwards everyone seemed to have recovered their vigour, with one powerful scene following the next to the emotionally complex conclusion. Outstanding in the cast is Bulgarian tenor Bojidar Nikolov as Lensky, the man in love with Tatyana's sister Olga and the one who introduces Onegin to Tatyana. His deeply felt meditation in Act 2 before his duel with Onegin justly received the loudest and longest applause of the evening. Nikolov's performance combines a magnificent voice with finely detailed acting. American mezzo Melanie Sonnenberg is well cast as Lensky's beloved Olga. Her vocal strength and projection of character perfectly match those of Nikolov. Both, in fact, provided the main source of energy in Act 1 and continued to do so in Act 2. Welsh tenor Jason Howard gives an excellent performance in the difficult role of Onegin, one that requires his character to move from hauteur to despair while remaining till just near the end, as in Pushkin's verse-novel, a mostly unsympathetic character.
Elizabeth Turnbull and Jacqui Lynn Fidlar turn in fine performances in the character roles respectively of Mme Larin (Tatyana's and Olga's mother) and the dour servant Filiyevna. So do Giuliano Di Filippo as the foolish French tutor M. Triquet and Stefan Szkafarowski as Prince Gremin, who, though twice her age, becomes Tatyana's husband. He gives a moving performance of Gremin's oft-excerpted aria in Act 3 about the happiness his marriage has brought him. By Act 3, Lisa Houben's voice and acting had also improved. One can only conclude that she feels more comfortable with the role of Tatyana as the refined wife of Prince Gremin than as Tatyana, the impressionable teenager.
Wes McBride's set, built and owned by the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, presents three tiers of floorboards from which burst the trunks of very realistic birch trees to either side, as if we are in a clearing in a forest. The trees remain in place during both indoor and outdoor scenes. Some may find this odd, but anyone with a knowledge of Russian literature will recognize this as an ingenious way to signal the sense of cultural inferiority that lurks behind even the grandest Russian façade. With such a simple set, it falls largely to Michael J. Whitfield's superb lighting to create mood. In Tatyana's Letter Scene, we gradually see, before it is sung, that Tatyana has stayed up all night and into the dawn. When she has sent the fateful letter to Onegin and suddenly questions what she has done, Whitfield makes us feel as if a cloud has suddenly passed over the morning sun. Whitfield uses the same effect in Act 2 for another fateful event--the tragic conclusion of the duel between Lensky and Onegin. After the ambiguous chill morning light, this suddenly darkening increases our sense of shock.
Nicolette Molnár's straightforward direction always makes the focus of each scene clear, even when multiple events and reactions are taking place. Only occasionally did I feel she positioned the chorus decoratively rather than naturalistically. Bengt Jörgen, aided by six members of his eponymous company, makes clever use of the confined area of the set's middle tier for the well-known dances in the last two acts. Energized perhaps by the swagger of these dances and the fine performances of Howard and Nikolov, Lipton's tempi quickened and with them the tense drama inherent in the music.
Setting aside the weaknesses of the first act, the audience on the night I attended gave the cast a boisterous standing ovation. That the audience should so enthusiastically embrace the introduction of repertoire new to the company I found very heartening. By slow degrees, Daniel Lipton, in his role as Artistic Director, has broadened the range of Opera Ontario and with it the perception of his audience of what constitutes opera. "La Traviata" with its string of hits is always assured success, but this performance convinced me that the emotional conflicts in "Eugene Onegin" are far more complex and communicated in a much subtler way. Although an artistic triumph, "Susannah" was not the popular success one had wished. Let's hope that the success this time of "Eugene Onegin" will encourage Lipton to continue to explore the the wondrous diversity that opera encompasses.
Photo: Lisa Houben and Jason Howard in promo photo. ©2001 John Rennison.
2001-02-10
Eugene Onegin