Eugene Onegin - European Union Opera DVD

From The Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden, The European Union Opera production of Tchaikovsky's passionate opera starring Orla Boylan and Vladimir Glushchak. Conducted by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, this production was the centerpiece of the European Union Opera's innaugural program.

Director Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production moves from a sunny first scene, carefree in the Russian country summer, all in whites and pale gold, to the black intensity of the St. Petersburg reception, a society tightly corsetted, the polonaise seething with repressed emotion. Along the way, Tatyana's imaginative day-dreaming transforms into grimreality. In the letter scene, romantic novels are clearly a major part of her bedroom; afterwards, the bookcase, though present awhile on stage, gradually sinks out of sight beneath the floor. Come the duel, a great white sheet draped across the stage blanks out everything that has been seen so far, before the black despair of the final scene.

DVD. 155 minutes. Color.