France Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Paris National Opera / Semyon Bychkov (conductor). Palais Garnier, Paris, 15.2.2026. (ES-S)
For a first-time opera director, there is something quietly audacious in choosing to present Eugene Onegin without an overt concept. In an era when canonical works are frequently reframed through political or psychological superstructures, Ralph Fiennes resists the impulse to impose an external thesis. His approach is neither deconstructive nor revisionist, privileging instead narrative clarity and close attention to emotional behavior. Its strength lies in trusting the opera’s internal architecture – its seasons, its charged silences, its returns – to generate meaning. Yet that same restraint at times shades into caution, most notably in the shaping of Onegin himself, whose emotional opacity is observed with care but not fully interrogated.
The production’s structural logic emerges most clearly in its treatment of memory. Lensky’s dead body remains on the stage after the duel, forming a stark visual bridge between Acts II and III; later, his phantom presence haunts the ball. The gesture functions both as an image of Onegin’s unresolved guilt and as a structural device binding the opera’s rural tragedy to its urban glitter. The ballroom’s brilliance unfolds under the shadow of what has not been laid to rest. Likewise, in the final scene, Tatyana appears wrapped in the same shawl she wore during the Letter Scene, a subtle visual recall that folds past and present together. The detail is discreet but dramatically exact. In this Eugene Onegin, nothing is erased by time; everything accumulates.
Michael Levine’s scenography gives that principle visual form, presenting memory as something retained but continuously reframed. The opera opens in an unmistakably Russian landscape: silver birch trunks rising from a carpet of autumn leaves, as Madame Larina and Filipyevna sit preparing preserves. It is a foundational landscape – both physical and emotional – from which everything else evolves. Tatyana’s bedroom remains anchored within it, and the winter duel scene appears not as rupture but as another seasonal facet of the same world. When the action shifts to Saint Petersburg, the palette turns to white and gold, the birches replaced by rigid architectural lines and mirrored surfaces. Yet the transformation is not absolute: silhouettes are initially profiled against backlit frames, an effect first introduced with Tatyana’s entrance. Snow continues to fall, allowing the earlier landscape to persist. Alessandro Carletti’s lighting lends fluidity to these transitions, while Annemarie Woods’s period costumes situate the production firmly in Pushkin’s world, distinguishing rural restraint from courtly refinement through measured contrast.
Movement, too – not always perfectly synchronized – reinforces the progression from rural, faintly unruly vitality to courtly rigidity. In Sophie Laplane’s choreography, the Act I peasant dances carry a grounded, almost unruly energy, while the Act II cotillion is tightly patterned, its formal geometry heightening social unease and sharpening the humiliations that propel the drama toward the duel. By the time the Act III Polonaise asserts its ceremonial splendor, grandeur has hardened into display. The appearance of dancers wearing bear heads during the Petersburg festivities introduces a sudden surreal inflection, briefly unsettling the courtly polish.
The choral scenes were handled with similar care. Rather than functioning as decorative backdrop, the chorus moved with a sense of lived presence; individual reactions and fleeting exchanges were discernible within the collective. Fiennes avoids turning the ensemble into an anonymous mass, allowing personality to surface without disturbing the overall compositional balance.
In the pit, Semyon Bychkov conducted with a sense of proportion that echoed the staging’s clarity, fashioning the music in long, flexible spans rather than dramatic bursts. The Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris responded with a supple, transparent sound: strings finely blended, woodwinds emerging with conversational intimacy, inner voices balanced so that orchestral detail registered without disturbing the broader arc. In an opera and staging so attentive to memory, Bychkov subtly revealed Tchaikovsky’s recurring motifs as they returned in different guises.
The vocal performances matched the orchestra’s refinement, combining technical assurance with emotional definition. Bogdan Volkov, making his house debut as Lensky, gave the afternoon’s most compelling performance. His tenor, luminous and evenly produced across the range, conveyed youthful ardor without undue fragility. In ‘Kuda, kuda’, the legato extended in long, unbroken arcs, the dynamic shading precisely calibrated: phrases tapered into finely sustained pianissimos without loss of core, crescendos shaped gradually rather than pressed forward. At the top of the line, the sound retained its focus. The final measures, conveying resignation, were sustained with a nearly suspended breath.
Ruzan Mantashyan’s Tatyana combined vocal suppleness with emotional acuity. Her soprano, warm and firmly centered, carried a youthful brightness in the opening scenes, the middle register flexible and expressive. In the Letter Scene, emotion seemed to move faster than reflection: phrases grew naturally from hushed, inward tones into full, sustained climaxes without strain. The upper register remained open and luminous, never hard-edged, while moments of hesitation were etched with delicate restraint. By the final act, her voice had gained weight and steadiness, the tone more grounded, the vibrato slightly broader. In the confrontation with Onegin, feeling was contained but unmistakable; her refusal to yield was not born of cold detachment but carried the weight of a past that cannot be undone.
As her sister Olga, mezzo-soprano Marvic Monreal brought lightness and ease to the more flirtatious character. Her voice, warm in the lower register and flexible across the range, conveyed an unaffected buoyancy that provided a natural foil to Tatyana’s quiet gravity.
In the title role, Boris Pinkhasovich offered a vocally assured and stylistically controlled performance. His baritone, dark-hued and evenly sustained, projected authority without strain, the tone firm throughout. The early rejection of Tatyana was delivered with composure, and in the final act the surge of belated passion was conveyed with dignity more than desperation. The psychological fissure at the core of the character remained understated, the inner turmoil contained. The rendering echoed Ralph Fiennes’s own earlier portrayal of Onegin in his sister’s film; what registers compellingly through cinematic close-up, however, can seem emotionally remote on the operatic stage.
The secondary roles were cast with distinction. Alexander Tsymbalyuk’s Prince Gremin brought gravitas, the warm, resonant bass lending his aria naturalness and nobility. Susan Graham’s Madame Larina retained poise and elegance; while her voice no longer carries the amplitude of earlier years, its timbre continues to convey refinement and authority. Elena Zaremba’s Filipyevna brought quiet warmth, her mezzo-soprano shaded with gentle compassion. Peter Bronder’s Monsieur Triquet provided a deftly judged touch of irony, his couplets precisely articulated without slipping into caricature.
As Ralph Fiennes’s operatic directorial debut and Semyon Bychkov’s first Paris Opera performances since being named the company’s next music director, this new staging carried clear symbolic weight. Whether it marks the beginning of a new artistic chapter, for either artist or institution, remains to be seen.
Edward Sava-Segal
Featured Image: [l-r] Alexander Tsymbalyuk (Gremin), Ruzan Mantashyan (Tatyana) and Boris Pinkhasovich (Onegin) © Guergana Damianova/OnP
Production:
Director – Ralph Fiennes
Sets – Michael Levine
Costumes – Annemarie Woods
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti
Choreography – Sophie Laplane
Chorus master – Ching-Lien Wu
Cast:
Eugene Onegin – Boris Pinkhasovich
Tatyana – Ruzan Mantashyan
Lensky – Bogdan Volkov
Olga – Marvic Monreal
Prince Gremin – Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Madame Larina – Susan Graham
Filipyevna – Elena Zaremba
Monsieur Triquet – Peter Bronder
Zaretsky – Amin Ahangaran
Captain – Mikhail Silantev