Strange feeling: seeing “Onegin” the ballet, and not being able to forget the same moments of Tchaikovsky’s opera. For example, the peasants’ choir in the first act. Or the big scene from the letter. Or again the air of Prince Gremin who confesses unaware to Yevgeny: “Onegin, I will not hide it from you: I love Tatiana, to madness”. Just him. He refused the love of Tatjana, a young country noblewoman and then fell in love with her when she found her a great lady in the Petersburg society, married, precisely, to Gremin.
But this feeling lasts for a moment, because the music, also by Tchaikovsky and the choreography by John Cranko, have the better of memories.
Cranko’s ballet, which has its roots in Pushkin’s novel in verse, one of the highest moments in Russian literature of the early 1800s, returns to the Scala in Milan for a series of replicas (until September 26) that saw Roberto triumph at the first Bolle and Marianela Núñez. Happily taken up in the replicas by the first dancers of the theater, for example Nicoletta Manni and Marco Agostino, alongside Сlaudio Coviello and Agnese di Clemente as Lenskij and Olga.
The ballet follows the opera step by step more than the poem. First scene, therefore, in the garden of the Larin country house where Tatjana (Manni) is immersed in reading (the French novels of Russian girls!), While her sister Olga and her friends dance and play staring at the mirror that should reflect the face of the girl. ‘beloved. Tatiana sees the face of Onegin (Augustine) who shortly after, all in black, appears in the garden accompanied by his friend Lenskij. Reserved, bored, unfriendly, he is the prototype of the “superfluous man” (lishnyj chelovek), the man of the early Russian nineteenth century, that is, who lives without ideals and attention to what is happening in the Russian society of the moment. He is adored by the Petersburg nobility and looks with snobbery at the country society where he wanders in the company of Lensky and where he has come to the inheritance of an old uncle. But when he finds her princess and spending money in the capital’s society, he cannot help but fall in love with her and confess his love for her in a letter that the woman will tear up. Just as he had torn up the love confession of the young and naive Tatyana.
There are unforgettable moments of the ballet in which Cranko distilled his choreographic knowledge. The scene of the letter when Onegin appears in front of the large mirror in Tatjana’s bedroom, dancing with the girl. And her dream prompts her to write him a letter in which she confesses her love for her. Studded with solos and twos, the ballet reaches its climax with the duet of despair when, in the finale, Onegin begs the love of Tatjana who, while still loving him, remains faithful to her husband, Gremin.
Here Nicoletta Manni, from a carefree girl covers a wide expressive arc and becomes a woman aware of her role and ready to sacrifice feelings in the face of the duty of fidelity. In the same way as Freo he takes the reverse path and from being a contemptuous dandy he becomes a lover moved by a deep feeling. In the second couple Coviello, as always, dances his solo with elegance and introspective force. The whole company, under the sure hand of the director Manuel Legris, gives its best.