(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
29 October
In the Wikipedia® entry on Pushkin's Eugene Ongein, someone has gone to great trouble to show that the duel, despite Onegin's second Zaretski being (according to Pushkin's narrator) classical and pedantic in duels (chapter 6, stanza XXVI), should have ended with Lenski declared the winner, because Onegin was supposed to be there within fifteen minutes of the appointed hour.
As it is, the opera is what it is, and maybe all that we can learn is that (a) Onegin, from what the poem goes on to say, should not have relied on Zaretski in these matters. For us to imagine (b) that Onegin willingly acquiesced in the breaches of the rules to get Lenski killed, or (c) that Pushkin wrote about a duel without knowing the rules is unneedful.
Curious, though, that the moral inertia of these times is reflected in the lack of care in the arrangements for the duel, with all that stems from in for Olga, her sister Tatiana, and both families...
These thoughts stem from a recent live broadcast from The Metropolitan Opera, in Screen 1 at @CamPicturehouse, of Tchaikovksy's opera. (But there is also Ralph Fiennes in a film version, Onegin (1999), that seemed interminable.)
The Met's programme notes have things thus :
Lenski's second finds Onegin's late arrival and his choice of a second insulting. Although Both Lenski and Onegin are full of remorse, neither stops the duel. Lenski is killed.
On the interpretation of the duel above, there should have, at least, been an offer for Onegin to make an apology.
In this production, Onegin was played by Mariusz Kwiecień, Lenski by Piotr Beczala :
In killing Lenski, whom he made jealous with his fiancée, Onegin (via @CamPicturehouse from The Met) kills himself - as The Winter's Tale ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 5, 2013
Alexei Tanovitski played Prince Gremin, Anna Netrebko Tatiana :
In Onegin, from The Met via @CamPicturehouse, Tanovitski amazes with his expressive bass, but Kwiecień's baritone blends well with Netrebko.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 5, 2013
Tchaikovsky, using Pushkin's verses, concentrates in Onegin as if they were orchestral solos : the Prince's aria underlies Tatiana's fidelity
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 5, 2013
@THEAGENTAPSLEY Gremin was great!
— Attila (@attilalondon) October 5, 2013
I thoroughly agree, @attilalondon, with all of that - the audience saw all those qualities.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 5, 2013
I'm guessing that he reached into the text, and all that is there, @attilalondon.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 5, 2013
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
