Polonaise from Eugene Onegin
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born at Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka Province, Russia, on May 7, 1840, and died in St. Petersburg on November 6, 1893. He composed his opera Eugene Onegin between May 1877 and February 1878; the first performance was on March 29, 1879, in a student production by the Moscow Conservatory at the Maly Theater, Moscow, with Nikolai Rubinstein conducting. The first professional performance took place on January 23, 1881, at the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow.
The score of the opera calls for an orchestra of 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, timpani, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).
Tchaikovsky turned one of the greatest classics of Russian literature, Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin, into one of the most popular of Russian operas—and one of the most unusual, for it involves no grand heroics, and little in the way of melodramatic gesture. It deals rather with quite ordinary people and the common concerns of human relationships. The opera proceeds in music that conveys its conversational tone with remarkable accuracy, so that when suppressed passion does break out, its effect is all the stronger. The poem is rich in social commentary, which can scarcely be treated in the opera’s libretto, but the basic outline of the plot is fairly closely followed.
The young Tatiana, daughter of Madame Larina, falls in love with Eugene Onegin, the friend of her sister’s fiancé. She writes him a letter revealing her most private feelings, only to find herself devastated when he responds, frankly but not unkindly, that he can love her like a brother only; more passionate love and marriage are not for him. Onegin is a sophisticated urbanite bored with the lives of the countryfolk he is visiting. The last act takes place years later. Onegin has been abroad for some time in atonement for having killed his friend in a duel fought over a trivial point of honor. He appears as a guest at a fashionable house in St. Petersburg. When his kinsman, Prince Gremin, enters the room, Onegin is enchanted by his sophisticated wife, who turns out to be none other than the “simple” country girl Tatiana he had rejected some years before. Now it is Onegin’s turn to be left distraught when his passionate letter to Tatiana finds her admitting her love for him, but insisting that he remember the path of honor.
The brilliant Polonaise, which introduces the party scene at the beginning of the last act, is a splendid characterization of the rich social world into which Tatiana has come—it is music of high society, a far cry from the countrified dances associated with her in the earlier acts. Already in the opening measures Tchaikovsky has succeeded in bringing to life an entirely different milieu, and in doing so he makes possible the drama of his final act.
Steven Ledbetter
Steven Ledbetter, a freelance writer on music, was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.
The first American performance of Eugene Onegin (a concert performance sung in English) took place on February 1, 1908, at Carnegie Hall in New York, with Walter Damrosch conducting.
The first Boston Symphony Orchestra performances of music from Eugene Onegin were of Lensky’s Aria with Serge Koussevitzky and tenor Roland Hayes, December 27, 1931. Arthur Fiedler conducted the Polonaise with members of the BSO in Lowell on April 2, 1948; Joseph Silverstein conducted it in October 1983 in West Point and Brookville, New York; Seiji Ozawa led the first Tanglewood performance, July 15, 1990; and Carl St. Clair led its first subscription performances at Symphony Hall in November 1990. Concert performances of the complete opera have been led by Seiji Ozawa in August 1974 at Tanglewood and October 1976 in Symphony Hall and New York’s Carnegie Hall. More recently, Renée Fleming sang Tatiana in a complete concert performance of Eugene Onegin led by Sir Andrew Davis at Tanglewood, with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, on August 2, 2008.