Eugene Onegin (Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky)

Pushkin's verse roman d'education, Eugene Onegin marked the beginning of Russian literature and of Russian itself as a literary language. It is a bitter-sweet tale of the devastation wrought by the arrival of a sophisticated, arrogant young man in an ordinary family. A widow and her two daughters live in the country. Nothing more exciting ever happens to them than the gathering of a good harvest. Olga and her mother are content with their simple life. The tender hearted Tatyana reads novels and weeps for the heroes and heroines. Soon she must weep for herself and her own family.

As you would expect from Tchaikovsky, the music is opulent and sumptuously romantic but it is the insistent rhythms and haunting melodies of Russian folk music that linger in the mind.

Eugene Onegin will be performed at Opéra de Baugé
on 2, 4 and 6 August