Michael Tanner

Michael Tanner: With seven scenes, Eugene Onegin really doesn’t need any more pauses

The Met made Tchaikovsky's famous Letter Scene too long, and Tatiana looked like she would fall asleep

Credit: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera 
issue 19 October 2013
This year’s live relays of New York Met performances have a markedly Slav flavour, with Shostakovich’s rare The Nose next up, and later Dvorak’s Rusalka and, most interestingly, Borodin’s Prince Igor. It kicked off with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, the most popular though not the finest of his operas. On the first night there were sustained protests both outside and inside the Met, against the Putin crony Valery Gergiev and against Anna Netrebko, a supporter of the plutocrat dictator.
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