We left at the interval...

Opéra Garnier, Paris, Wednesday February 18 2026 Conductor: Case Scaglione. Production: Ralph Fiennes. Sets: Michael Levine. Costumes: Annemarie Woods. Lighting: Alessandro Carletti. Choreography: Sophie Laplane. Onegin: Boris Pinkhasovich. Tatiana: Ruzan Mantashyan. Lensky: Bogdan Volkov. Olga: Marvic Monreal. Prince Gremin: Alexander Tsymbalyuk. Larina: Susan Graham. Filipievna: Elena Zaremba. Monsieur Triquet: Peter Bronder. Zaretski: Amin Ahangaran. Commander: Mikhail Silantev. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris. Photos: © Guergana Damianova - OnP A handful of quotes to start the ball rolling: ‘Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.’ (Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance.) ‘Le grand ennemi de l’art, c’est le bon goût’ (art’s greatest enemy is good taste). (Marcel Duchamp.) ‘C’est plat’ (as in ‘platitude’). My neighbour at the first interval. ‘J’adore cette partition. Qu’est-ce qu’on s’est ennuyé !’ (I love this score. Were we...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday February 5 2023 Conductor: Alain Altinoglu. Production and Costumes: Laurent Pelly. Sets: Massimo Troncanetti. Lighting: Marco Giusti. Larina: Bernadetta Grabias. Tatiana: Sally Matthews. Olga: Lilly Jorstad. Filippyevna: Cristina Melis. Onegin: Stéphane Degout. Lensky: Bogdan Volkov. Gremin: Nicolas Courjal. Petrovich: Kris Belligh. Zaretsky: Kamil Ben Hsaïn Lachiri. Triquet: Christophe Mortagne. Guillot: Jérôme Jacob-Paquay. Precentor: Hwanjoo Chung. La Monnaie Orchestra and Chorus. Photos: Forster, La Monnaie Two Pelly productions in a row: after a youthful Le Voyage dans la Lune at the Opéra Comique on Friday, Eugene Onegin in Brussels on Sunday. But before writing about the production, I want to plunge straight in with a paean of praise for Stéphane Degout. Pardon me, in advance, for the laboured, purple prose; sometimes I find the going tough. I don't know how the professionals do it. This was, so I read, Degout's role début as Onegin and h...

ONP Bastille, Monday September 20 2010 Conductor: Vasily Petrenko. Production: Willy Decker. Sets & costumes: Wolfgang Gussmann. Lighting: Hans Toelstede. Madame Larina: Nadine Denize. Tatiana: Olga Guryakova. Olga: Alisa Kolosova. Filipievna: Nona Javakhidze . Eugene: Ludovic Tézier. Lenski: Joseph Kaiser. Prince Gremin: Gleb Nikolski. Monsieur Triquet: Jean-Paul Fouchécourt. Ugo: Rabec Zaretski. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. There are evenings at the opera when everything is so sound that you can’t easily put your finger on what it was that left you not-quite-satisfied (“sur votre faim”). So it was this Monday at Eugene Onegin . The singers? Surely not. Nadine Denize may now make a rather underpowered Madame Larin, but hers isn’t a pivotal role. Olga Guryakova’s voice may be a little harder and stiffer than it was back in War and Peace , but, as my neighbour said, what magnificent sounds she makes. And (a) whatever she may have lost (and that’s not much), s...