Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera review: this tale of heartbreaking regret gets the spine tingling

For a tale of heartbreaking regret for a missed opportunity, Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, as set to music by Tchaikovsky, would be hard to beat.

As Ted Huffman, director of the Royal Opera’s new production, is keen to point out, it’s a scenario of universal application, not necessarily rooted in its original Russian setting.

To this end Hyemi Shin’s set of dark grey and clouds offers an abstract mise-en-scène yet simultaneously suggests the foggy mists of memory referred to in the text. Astrid Klein’s contemporary costuming similarly avoids national identity, while the dances in Lucy Burge’s inventive choreography merely nod to Russian tropes.

Huffman goes further, though, by drawing repeated attention to the action as a theatrical representation not least with an illuminated proscenium.

Henrik Nánási conducts empathetically, bringing exhilarating vigour to the dances. Onegin is seen at the start and retires to remain at the rear of the stage, all but invisible, until he is introduced by Lensky.

That makes sense in that Tatyana admits to having intimated his presence even before meeting for the first time. When Lensky, having shot himself in the duel, stands up to take a bow, some may begin to wonder whether this is an idea taken too far.

As for Lensky’s suicide, however, there’s a suggestion here that his lover Olga, Tatyana’s sister, may be more than simply teasing him – indeed we have earlier seen her astride Onegin. It’s therefore plausible that his future seems to him irredeemably bleak without either lover or best friend.

Onegin remains onstage alone at the end railing at his fate and a thrilling conclusion it is too, until he bows to signal the end of the performance. It’s a directorial manoeuvre that once again risks bathos and I suspect I wasn’t alone in finding the moment at which Onegin and Tatiana sing of the marital happiness that eluded them the one at which the spine finally tingled.

In the title role the Canadian baritone Gordon Bintner, a tall, curly-haired blond, cuts an arresting figure and produces much fine tone, if sometimes a little unsteady.

Kristina Mkhitaryan also brings an attractive tonal quality and impressive line to the role of Tatyana. Her Letter Scene never really took fire, but when she raised the emotional intensity later, turning the tables on Onegin while evincing the bitter pain of her own regret, she gave notice of a superior Tatyana in the making.

There was little of truly stellar quality either in the remaining roles, though Liparit Avetisyan was a convincingly Italianate Lensky and Avery Amereau a vocally dependable Olga.

Brindley Sherratt stood in as Prince Gremin at very short notice and his sonorous tone and gravitas rightly won him cheers, even if he would probably have liked a little more time to ease himself into the part.