Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky arranged Kurt-Heinz Stolze

Onegin

The Royal Ballet

Dancers-
Eugene Onegin – Reece Clarke
Lensky – William Bracewell
Madame Larina – Elizabeth McGorian
Tatiana – Marianela Nuñez
Olga – Akane Takada
Nurse – Lara Turk
Prince Gremin – Lukas Bjørneboe Brændsrød
Relatives, countryfolk, members of the nobility – Artists of The Royal Ballet

Conductor – Wolfgang Heinz
Orchestra of The Royal Opera House

Choreography – John Cranko
Designer – Jürgen Rose
Lighting – Steen Bjarke

The return of John Cranko’s outstanding 1965 ballet Onegin is cause enough for celebration among ballet-goers at Covent Garden who, with the exception of Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella over the festive period, have been starved of works and classical dancing of note since the beginning of the season; that it has returned in such stupendous fashion with an opening night performance of both intensity and brilliance, doubly so.

Onegin is a perfect vehicle for actor-dancers to shine both in terms of interpretation and the beauty of their movements, and it is a genuine pleasure to report that the five protagonists were all of the first water. Reigning company ballerina Marianela Nuñez is not always successful in conveying intensity of emotion beyond the footlights, but as the bookish Tatiana spurned by the cold-hearted Onegin and then the elegant princess troubled by his return, she was quite superb. Much was down to the pairing of this technically impeccable dancer with Reece Clarke, The Royal Ballet’s tall, dark and handsome principal, their scenes crackling with emotion and telling detail, each feeding off the other in terms of their acting, the result devastating by the end. Nuñez’s interpretation was highly nuanced, her initial falling in love with Clarke’s Byronic anti-hero, her dismay at his rejection and, later, her torn emotions when he offers himself to her years afterwards, all conveyed in the clearest, most readable fashion. That final scene when Tatiana wrestles with her emotions between loyalty for her loving husband Gremin and the temptation of giving in to a now begging Onegin saw the dancer surpass herself.

Clarke was no less impressive, cold as Siberian snow and uninterested in others to the point of callousness; his toying cruelty towards his friend, the hot-headed poet Lensky, by flirting with his fiancée, Tatiana’s younger sister Olga, showed the emptiness of his heart and a total lack of human empathy. His change to a desperate, imploring individual by the end of the ballet was finely achieved, and his dancing and partnering were both impressively assured. 

Contrasting with the principal non-couple, the charming pairing of William Bracewell as Lensky and Akane Takada as Olga. Takada is a bubbling, excited younger sister whose incomprehension of the growing effect of her dancing with Onegin shows her naïve innocence. Her dancing was exquisite, nowhere more so than in her duet with Lensky in the opening scene, tender, yet bursting with youthful exuberance and hope – her journey is one to grief and loss when Onegin kills his friend and her fiancé in a duel fuelled more by pride than just cause. Bracewell convinced utterly as Lensky and made a great deal of his anguished solo before the duel; it was suffused with a melancholy born out of resignation that his life was to end. He shapes his movements with care yet maintains the sense of spontaneity; he brings out the theatricality in the character, a person whose emotions are large and barely controlled, be his love for Olga, his jealousy at her flirtations and his anger towards his friend Onegin for daring to humiliate him.

It was an example of brilliant casting to choose First Soloist Lukas Bjørneboe Brændsrød to portray Gremin, a role usually performed by an older dancer. He is tall, handsome and physically striking, just like Clarke, so a telling contrast is established when the two meet at the party given for Tatiana’s name day – Gremin and Onegin here look similar and are, in reality, contrasted only by their characters, the former loving and loyal, the latter cold and unfeeling. That contrast is further emphasised in the final act when Tatiana is now the Princess Gremina, their lives a model of marital contentment, and makes Tatiana’s need to choose between the two men all the more piquant. Brændsrød is exemplary in the role and makes a great deal of the loving, intimate pas de deux between him and Nuñez during the Act III ball.

A special mention for German conductor Wolfgang Heinz, who has conducted the ballet countless times in Stuttgart, its home house. His experience and understanding of the momentum needed for this work made for a thrilling orchestral contribution, tempi brisk and alive, underpinning the stage action to perfection. Heinz is unafraid to drive the music along, which makes for a pleasing contrast with the leisurely, even sluggish, musical approach which often characterises ballet performances at Covent Garden.

With this revival, The Royal Ballet season has finally caught fire after so many months of the pretentious, the trite and the unworthy. Catch it while you can.