The Russian spirit comes to life
reprinted with the permission of Haaretz Daily © (English)

By Haggai Hitron

This forest may still be seen today, says translator and author Rina Litvin, who recently visited the very estate and saw "alder, walnut, tamarisk, buckthorn, and here and there birch," and "pine trees hundreds of years old, 30 or more meters high, that go back to the days of the poet himself."

In Pushkin's poem, a little human drama takes place next to this forest, that unfolds in rhyme. In fact, notes Litvin, Pushkin is the one who first introduced Russian literature to the genre one might term "a romance in rhyme," and achieved an outcome that no artist after him dared attempt to emulate. The outline is simple: The daughter of a well-to-do country family, Tatiana, whose knowledge of life is drawn from romantic literature, falls in love with a cynical libertine, Yevgeny Onegin, and confesses as much in a letter to him. They meet, but he does not return her love. Subsequently, just to amuse himself, he provokes his friend Vladimir Lensky, a poet, who is engaged to Tatiana's sister. Lensky challenges him to a duel, Onegin wounds him mortally and flees. Years later, Onegin meets Tatiana, now a married woman, at a ball in Petersburg, and this time falls in love with her and confesses all. Now it is Tatiana who refuses, choosing loyalty to her husband over romance, but she admits to Onegin that she still loves him.

"Yevgeny Onegin" has been a symbol of the Russian spirit of romance for over a century, something the poet himself hinted in describing his heroine, Tatiana, as "a Russian soul" who adored the Russian winter "in all its cold splendor." Poet Leah Goldberg once wrote, as we're told in the program for the current Tel Aviv production, that lines from Pushkin's poem have structured the way educated Russians look at nature, as if they rhymes themselves were "flowers of a particular season, returning to flower at a certain time of year - a literary creation that lives on for generations, almost biologically alive, along with the earth, with nature, with humanity."

In the connection between a literary creation and life, there is no small measure of irony. Alexander Pushkin, the ultimate Russian artist, was from mixed ancestry - his great grandfather was an Ethiopian captive, Ibrahim Hannibal, presented as a gift to Czar Peter the Great. Tatiana, the opera's heroine, the "Russian soul," does not write her fateful letter in her mother tongue, but in French (Pushkin wrote that he was "translating" it for his readers). Rina Litvin says the poet wrote to women only in French, which was the convention to address ladies in his day. And Pushkin himself, who in the poem overly identifies with his hero Yevgeny, was in fact killed in a supposedly romantic duel something like the fictional Lensky's.

The simple tale is adorned with poetical language, thoughts, social criticism, and marvelous rhyme. The operatic framework, a very different medium, could not retain all of that. The heroes in the opera version are the characters in the plot itself - Tatiana, Onegin, his friend and rival Lensky; whereas in Pushkin's version, as Rina Litvin points out, there was one more hero: the author himself. The poet addresses his readers directly, narrates the plot, provides introductions and even inserts his reactions to it.

Pushkin's own words appear only in limited quantity in a few of the scenes of the opera. The most famous of these is the "letter scene," which gives us moments unique in operatic literature, with lines composed not just as libretto but for an acclaimed piece of poetry. "Tchaikovsky achieved a rare harmony here between words and melody," says Litvin, "both in the letter scene and in Lensky's famous aria, `Whither, whither.' The combination of words and music there is simply extraordinary."

Does the admiration for Pushkin's "Yevgeny Onegin" in Russia involve a certain nostalgia for a bygone era of aristocracy? Litvin believes not. Pushkin, she feels, did not personally yearn for the rural life. "He was an urban type, and even suffered from his compulsory stays at his parents' country estate, hundreds of miles from Petersburg, which to him were a type of exile. He saw the rural lives of the aristocrats fondly yet realistically; it was his literary achievement that evoked the admiration for him. What's wonderful about Pushkin is the combination: A sober description of the characters written in a warm, amusing tone with a lot of irony by someone who understands them, and who laughs - but stays with them."

Litvin says that there are wonderful translations of "Yevgeny Onegin" into English, including a annotated one by Vladimir Nabokov, which is not poetic but very illuminating. The current production of "Yevgeny Onegin" at the Tel Aviv Center for the Performing Arts is the second by the New Israeli Opera. The first was produced in 1991, at the Noga Hall in Jaffa, with different direction and sets. In the interim, the New Opera of Moscow visited Israel and put on a very nice production of "Yevgeny Onegin" at the Aviv Classical Festival in Rishon Letzion, two years ago.

The earlier Israeli Opera production had other singers in the leading roles. The only holdover is Asher Fisch, the conductor, who will alternate in the current production with Dan Ettinger. This will be one of three main productions this season ("Peter Grimes," "Onegin," and "Simon Bocanegra") and will have 13 performances. Under the direction of Jean-Claude Auvray, the role of Tatiana will be shared by Russian singer Natalia Dercho and Larissa Tetuev. The role of Onegin will also be shared by Mark Stone of England and Vladimir Petrov of Russia - both appearing with the Israeli Opera for the first time. Prince Gremin, Tatiana's husband, will be sung by Vladimir Braun, Svetlana Sandler will play Felipp'yevna, the nanny and Felix Livshitz will sing Lensky.