EUGENE ONEGIN

3 June - 23 July 2021

Tatyana, a bookish country girl, yearns for more than the compromise and routine of provincial family life. Hoping she has met her true fate in Onegin, a brilliant and glamorous society bachelor visiting from Moscow, she pours out her love for him in an impulsive and passionate letter, setting off an inexorable and tragic chain of events.

Based on Alexander Pushkin’s great verse novel of the same name, Tchaikovsky’s best-loved opera gives exquisite voice to the casualties of love, the victims in the battle between raw emotion and social convention. Tchaikovsky’s own pain, frustration and loss find expression here in some of his most haunting and beautiful music.

In this revival of Michael Boyd and Tom Piper’s acclaimed 2016 production, the title role is sung by Jonathan McGovern (title role, Don Giovanni, 2019) opposite Natalia Tanasii who makes her Garsington Opera debut as Tatyana. Douglas Boyd will conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Sung in Russian with English supertitles