Customer Reviews

Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin / Solti, Weikl, Hamari

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a beautifully filmed version of Onegin. While the music is impressively lyrical, you would even forget it's an opera because it's so well filmed. Since it's a film version, there are quite a few scenes edited out from the original Tchaikovsky's score.
The film starts with peasants' chorus. The opening music and quartet are deleted, which is actually a shame because I think the quartet contains the most important key word of the story; "Heaven granted me the habit in place of happiness." Maybe the director didn't want to give it away right from the beginning. Anyway, this music is restored in the special features and you can enjoy the music without motion picture.
The production is really great. Lady Larina's estate, Prince Gremin's palace, duel scene in the snow, scenes of the country side and of St-Petersburg, etc...everything is beautifully filmed. Even Onegin and Lensky arrive on hourses in the beginning. It's not filmed in studio so nothing seems phoney. Musically, it's one of the best recordings ever made.
The image isn't much remastered, nor is the sound. You can select DTS or 2-channel stereo and subtitles in 6 languages.
This is the best version of Onegin on DVD for now.... at least till someone put the Kirov's production with Leiferkus on DVD.

The film lasts only 117 minutes, which means almost 40 minutes of the original score is missing. Notoriously the opening theme and duet&quartet is cut out and the film start from the peasants' scene. Although, this DVD version includes the music only track of the opening. So, if you go to the bonus menu and select "prologue", it plays the opening music, duet & quartet and continues flawlessly to the film.
Some poeple complained about the scene selection. My copy of DVD works fine. It brings me to the very beginning of the act II or the act III. No problem.

I love this. It's true that the tracks don't go where they're supposed to but I watch opera all at once. This is a film, not a stage version, and the natural settings are wonderful. The acting is very good --- the actors are NOT the singers, which I found a bit strange initially --- and the singing is excellent. THe characterisations seem very good to me. There are some cuts, which I miss: in particular at the start when Tatyana's mother and nurse sing about their acceptance of their lot, and again when her nurse speaks of her young (arranged) marriage to Tatyana. I think these are odd omissions, since this is part of the important theme for Tatyana. I would recommend this dvd.

I really enjoyed this version of Onegin. It's more like a film than an opera. Indexing between the booklet and the DVD is 1 off, and there is a glitch in sound between tracks 12 and 13, but it is still a grat production. And I didn't have any problems navigating to Act II or Act III. What surprised me, the native Russian speaker, is that non-Russian singers sing in almost perfect Russian language.

I agree with everything the next viewer(dated May 31, 02)said about this DVD. I like Tchaikovsky's operas. I expected to see something Russian, but I was very disappointed. The stage design and the costume looked awlful. Only the Onegin character makes the DVD worth buying. Fat Tosca is okay, but not a Fat Tatiyana. The VHS version with Yuri Marusin and Sergei Leyferkus is definitely the 1st choice. It should be issued on DVD.

This is one of the best opera videos I have seen. The filming is crisp, clean, and attentive, the sound good, and the subtitles timely and legible. I was also especially pleased with the audience, which knew when to applaud and how to hold its enthusiasm back while the orchestra was still playing.

The staging was beautiful: minimalistic but hardly intimidating for traditionalists. The singing was very strong throughout. It's a incredible, poignant opera to begin with, and this is one of the best productions of it that I've seen. Read the Pushkin poem/novel if you want background on the plot.

This DVD contains wonderful singing, the orchestra playing is excellent, and the acting is superb. So why the 1 star? Because whoever prepared the transfer master was utterly incompetent. The indexing in the booklet and via the screen menus is completely wrong. For example if you try to start the beginning of Act II, it puts you in the middle of Act I. There is not the slightest pause between the acts. However, before the duel scene, there is a horrible glitch with a fraction of a second of sound during a screen blackout.

It's disgraceful that a major label would put this out; since clearly no one even bothered to check it.

If they ever fix these problems, I'd give it a full 5 stars!

I bought this DVD because it was so highly rated. It doens't deserve 4 stars! Not even three! The first act is pretty awful. It's so abstract and overdone. It gives you no feeling of a Russian countryside. It looks "POP". Olga is childish instead of youthful, Tatiana is fat (could be a beautiful lady if she loses some weight), Nya-nya is a big healthy maid. But Onegin is a real handsome guy. Maybe that's the only highlight of the whole opera.
Among all the other productions, my first choice is the live performance from Kirov with Yuri Marusin and Sergei Leyferkus. Tatiana (I don't recall the singer's name)is a rare beauty. She looks totally in role. I can't imagine anyone better than her. Only available on VHS, though. Too bad.

Among six versions on vhs or dvd or Eugen Onegin now, this European Union Opera Company (EU) Onegin is one of the two modernist ones, the other of which (produced by Graham Vick) on the one hand, mixes in more traditional elements than this one does, but fatally loses so much focus, intensity for its second half. The EU version makes excruciating drama out of all critical passages in its final hour. The much more than casually engaged interaction between all characters in this Onegin belies that it was one put together under international auspices.

Nikolaus Lehnhoff is the producer for the EU dvd. It starts out not promising quite as much as it will deliver, whereas the Vick/Davis one does start off quite well, with Andrew Davis offering a little more flow from the podium than an at first slightly heavier Rozhdestvensky. Orla Boylan, on the EU, strikes some viewers as a little above the middleweight limit (and the Act 3 derived frontispiece for newcomers especially is a little unfair), the Filipievna (Katja Boost) as not looking any older than the sisters; the Larina of Ineke Vlogtman holds her own, compared with the cameo appearance by Yvonne Minton on the Vick/Davis.

The handsome, energetic Olga of Anna Burford offers deep contralto reserves, but comes off as just a bit too hyper early on. All issues brought up here so far are minor, including a brief line of sagging pitch by the entering Onegin of Vladimir Glushchak during the quartet of lovers. The Lensky is Michael Konig, who perhaps gives a little too early hint of what a hothead this character quickly becomes in Act Two. He sings lyrically, attractively enough, when not compelled to force, which occurs momentarily only twice. The dreamy poet Lensky of Martin Thompson on Vick/Davis is a little preferable.

What is there to make of the two relative unknown leads on this, the EU Onegin? The answer is quite a bit actually, but with a perplexed shrug of chagrin about what may have happened the past six years, to the two singers in question.

Irish soprano Orla Boylan, while less intense early on an actress than Elena Prokina (Vick/Davis), is the more girlish, homespun, and frequently most personably attractive of the two, and apart from a few moments, more clearly on pitch. Looking up her bio on the net, the mention of Renata Scotto throws up a red flag. Boylan, no doubt here however, is a smart and very shrewd girl, knowing to in a way self-critically replace a couple of uncomfortable pitches written in the closing duet to the Letter Scene with her nurse, with two of her own just slightly enough above the break to comfortably sing them in tune; she does so with maximum expressive impact. Whereas I do not endorse this practice, she still makes complete musical sense of the line in question.

Her Letter Scene, especially at the lyrical core of it, exudes a very attractive intimacy, redolent of Schubert, Schumann, with fine acting to match. The heartbreak of later scenes, and poise she exudes when meeting Onegin in Act Three, are all very palpable, and she handles everything in a great final scene with Glushchak with aplomb, and not intimidated in the least by how much the intensity of all proceedings has been turned up. Nuccia Focile on the Philips set (on cd) handles comparable challenges a little less well, with her tendency to constrict at the break to pull forth more sound above it (and which for her constantly threatens intonation), such a tendency to remind me directly of Scotto. She is suitably charming, though, for so much else less hard on such a light voice as hers.

Vladimir Glushchak is the handsome but equally ever self-conscious, reticent, introverted and at least seemingly to himself, prudent, sagacious Onegin. He (and also the Prince Gremin in Act Three) capitalizes very well on his comfort with the language he is singing. He also makes most flexible, almost always subtle use of his lean voice to comfortably meet all the vocal demands of his part. Here is an Onegin easily comparable to Thomas Allen on DGG, but the more specifically urbane, thus less cosmopolitan of the two.

Apart from a fleeting moment of questionable intonation, he yields nothing to any of the competition. In appearance on stage, he is a gaunt man, but never one to so unduly strain thoracic, neck muscles to indicate emotional intensity as with Dwayne Croft on a televised final scene opposite Catherine Malfitano once, and is often the temptation nowadays. He quickly establishes frisson with the Lensky in their moments of confrontation, to make both them, and also the moment on a bare, bleak, white sheet covered stage for the duel scene, where as curtain falls, he leans over the body of his former friend, very intense.

Let's see, hear more work of both Glushchak and Boylan, soon, the latter from Ireland again to also challenge the market hegemony of Ronan Tynan and gang, shameless about feeding at the public trough, with the offer of something so much better, honest, and substantial - no pun intended. One gets much enjoyment from watching her closely throughout this dvd. She, of course, brings out Gennady Rozhdestvensky, sparkle in his eye, for curtain calls at the end. One wishes that we could have seen at least a few glimpses of him during orchestral interludes.

The first scene of Act Three, following the scene of Lensky's death, is riskily staged quite macabre, Polonaise and onward, unlike any other seen on video. The highly snobbish air at the St Petersburg ball is most effectively seen a little under the cover of darkness. Bring on Michail Schelomianski as the safely complacent Prince Gremin, one to shrewdly enter in a wink or two to his lines about his living in the midst of a very stuffy court, as his lines in the middle section of his aria tell us. He sings all of it, the one moment of relaxation within an intense final act, very attractively. The Vick/Davis, especially for Act Three Scene One, and with the character of Onegin for the entirety of it, wallows in foppishness; Lehnhoff gives us the same thing in spades, but wisely limits it to Monsieur Triquet (couplets very aptly sung, acted by Thomas Morris) and the noir setting of the polonaise.

Some of the abstraction of the Lehnhoff production and a little slowness to find its pace at the start of it, may be off putting to a few viewers. As one more closely watches it, most everything after the first scene of it expresses a keen awareness of the music and dramatic potential of doing new, interesting things with the subject at hand. Paired with the authoritative, frequently probing and for second half intensely engaged baton of Gennady Rozhdestvensky, I can not hesitate in giving this dvd a sound endorsement for what is, after at worst a tentative first 30 minutes of it, an Onegin mostly worthy of five stars.

I must agree with the previous reviews about the dubbing, or remastering shortfalls. Frankly, those glaring problems prevent me from writing a review with 5 stars. If this DVD was a live opera performance, with no remastering or dubbing, I probably would give it more than 5 stars, if I could. Afterall, this of course Tchaikovsky and Onegin (Solti, too). Also the actresses protraying Olga and Tatyana make this DVD. I'm glad the actress protraying Olga isn't on a CD, because she is awesome looking. I never heard of her before. Tatyana is fine, but Olga is perfect. I'm not sure how any production team can get past the remastering/dubbing issue. This is my first Onegin on video or DVD and it will suffice. I made an audio tape of the Met broadcast from a few years ago (of course for my own use) and that was just about a perfect performance. (With as much money as I give the Met, I think I can tape a performance or two for myself!)