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| Nicole Car as Tatyana Artists of Opera Australia. |
Sydney Opera House until 28th March 2014.
Melbourne April 16 - May 9th
Reviewed by Bill Stephens
Tchaikovsky’s
glorious music, beautifully interpreted by the Australian Opera and ballet
orchestra under the baton of Gillaume Tourniaire, and superbly sung by a cast
of outstanding singers is reason enough to see this opera.
Nicole Car
is perfectly cast as Tatyana. Not only does she look beautiful, and sing
gloriously, but she also has the acting ability to make totally convincing her
overwhelming attraction for the mysterious Onegin, and her devastation when her
declarations of love are ultimately rejected by Onegin.
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| Sian Pendry as Olga - James Egglestone as Lensky. |
Sian Pendry
was also impressive as her scatty and impetuous sister, Olga, whose fiancé Lensky, a fine performance by James Egglestone, is needlessly killed by Onegin in a
duel.
Despite
singing superbly throughout, Dalibor Jenis proved a rather dour Onegin, much
given to skulking behind pillars, making his attraction for the beautiful
Tatyana a little hard to believe. He was not helped by the fact that he was
often required to share the stage with his younger self, a dashing and handsome
dancer, Sam Colbey.
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| Nicole Car (Tatyana) - Dalibor Jenis (Eugene Onegin) |
Though
appearing a little young as Tatyana’s mother Dominica Matthews gave a well-sung
and interestingly acted performance. Kanen Breen, as always, made the role of
the French tutor, Triquet, memorable, and Jonathan McCauley, Jacqueline Dark,
and Adrian Tamburini, all provided strong support. Konstantin Gorny as Prince Gremlin
was a commanding presence and his aria provided one of the particularly memorable
moments of the production.
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| Nicole Carr (Tatyana) - Konstantin Gorny (Prince Gremlin) |
Not so
satisfactory however was the direction of Kasper Holten who managed to turn a
relatively simple story into something perplexing and confusing. It was clear
from photographs printed in the program that the sets had had to be compromised
to fit onto the Sydney opera house stage. This may have accounted for why the
setting became so claustrophobic as the opera wore on. Not having the space
available to him may also have compromised the director’s original vision.
Whatever the
reasons, besides having to cope with two Tatyanas (dancer Emily Ranford
charmingly played the young Tatyana) and two Onegins, there was the ever-accumulating
detritus of the character’s past lives cluttering the stage, commencing with a
letter thrown away by Tatyana, her scattered books, a broken chair hurled
across the ballroom by Lensky, the branch of a tree occupied by
Lensky before his death in the duel, and finally Lensky’s body which stayed on
stage after he was killed, all of which had to be negotiated by the characters in later scenes.
There was
also the rather extraordinary choreography of Signe Fabricius, which made
nonsense of the magnificent waltz in the ballroom scene, and later, in a curious
interlude which had the dancers hanging off Onegin or laying around the stage with
their bottoms in the air.
While most
of the symbolism was easily grasped, it also felt unnecessary, distracting and
intrusive so that that much of the opera was spent trying to make sense of what
was being seen on stage rather than luxuriating in Tchaikovsky’s glorious music.
All images by Lisa Tomasetti.