Die Zeit, sie ist ein sonderbar Ding… Hugo von Hofmannsthal was not wrong about that, but since his days Vienna has lost a bit the touch in what regards timing, particularly when the matter is Falk Richter’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Evgeny Onegin’s for the Wiener Staatsoper. In his interview, Richter says his production is zeitlos, but I have the impression he should have checked the word in the dictionary before this statement. “Atemporal” means something that is connected to no particular time, while this staging makes references to different moments in time – from the 60’s to the present days – without any coherence or any discernable reason for that. Tatjana, Larina, Filipyevna and Lensky (in spite of a very modern-style outfit) seem characters from Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the grass, while Onegin, Olga and the guests in Tatjana’s birthday could have appeared in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises – the peasants in act I remain quite Sovietic themselves though – and Monsieur Triquet’s old-style couplets make no sense in the videoclip approach. To make things worse, characters behaved in a nonsensical way – Tatjana too grown-up for her “last-virgin-in-town”-attitude, not to mention that the vamp-looking Olga seemed quite mentally-challenged hopping around Lensky in girly (?) enthusiasm.
Kirill Petrenko’s conducting suggested agitation rather than intensity – the house orchestra’s beautifully transparent sonorities particularly different from the dense strings usually associated to Russian music. While the multicoloured impression is quite welcome, I am not sure if I prefer the zipping pace to the full bloom of a rich orchestral sound. In any case, the febrility worked really well for the closing scene, when both soloists responded accordingly in engagement and slancio. Although Olga Guryakova’s soprano has more than a splash of edginess and tends to the emphatic and unflowing when things get high and fast, it has an aptly youthful sound and, when you least expect, flashes up in some forceful acuti. Vocal aspects aside, Guryakova’s Tatjana is the work of a true artist. Every inflection, every gesture, every look has meaning and speaks directly to the heart. In that sense, it is the opposite of the leading baritone’s performance, since Dmitri Hvorostovsky seemed to be posing for publicitary photos during the whole evening. There were moments when I feared he would wink and wave to the audience. Fortunately, the voice was in very good shape and creates in its rich, velvety tonal quality the right impression of attractiveness and impetuosity. Pavol Breslik was a sensitive if small-scaled Lensky and Nadia Krasteva was a reliable if unexceptional Olga, but the audience’s favourite clearly was Ferruccio Furlanetto, whose dark, spacious and expressive bass filled the hall in a noble account of his aria. Both Zoryana Kushpler and Margaret Hintermeier deserve mention for their convincing accounts of the small roles of Larina and Filipyevna.
I HEAR VOICES 