Is there social progress? In Russia? In Germany? Or is a cruel fate forcing peoples into the abyss again and again in ideological blindness. How many times will they fall in and get up again, battered, until the next fall? Does true love exist? Or are feelings fleeting in nature and bound to fade into habits? And what does one have to do with the other? The young director Matthias Piro plunges his audience into these and similarly desperate questions at the University of Music and Theater. With a light hand, clever head and compassion, he put the opera “Eugene Onegin” by Peter I. Tchaikovsky on the Forum stage as the final production. He has not only achieved a masterpiece, but also a small sensation: this performance is so good that it could be shown at any state opera house.
Escaping rabbits, copulating wolves
This is also due to the quality of the orchestra under the direction of Constantin Schiffner and the voices of a wonderful ensemble that performs professionally and also shines vocally. On the stage, two sisters live with their mother Larina (Maria Eichler) in a living room on the left and a kitchen on the right in a prefabricated building. This is proven by film images on the screen above the three-dimensional backdrop (stage: Lisa Moro). The first picture already shows where the rabbit is buried in the pepper and proves the topicality of the material, which remains located here in Russia. While documentary footage of animals in the snow can be seen on the screen – fleeing rabbits, copulating wolves, a hunting stoat – what happens in the apartment is what it must be like with two young girls.
Tatjana (Dalia Besprozvany) makes it clear to Onegin (Yusuf Slavov) that she loves him but won’t leave her husband
Source: ©Jörg Modrow/Jörg Modrow
Olga (Aisha Otto) is hanging on to her smartphone instead of helping her mother with the laundry. Her sister Tatjana (Dalia Besprozvany) prefers to read and dream away, namely in the verse epic “Eugene Onegin” by a certain Alexander Pushkin. This decision by the director to put the book in the hands of the actors, consistently carried out from the first to the last scene, reinforces the contrast between the realistic plot and the romantic composition and expands it on another level. The audience is challenged to always think about the alternative to reality. Life here not only hangs by a thread again and again, but also hovers between dream and reality, between literature and personal fate. The images on the screen are partly pre-produced film recordings and partly live images created with a hand-held camera. They expand the stage’s action space to include a small garden behind the rooms.
Strongly sung and played
The video images under which the German translation is displayed comment on, reinforce, contrast or illuminate what is currently happening below them – regardless of age restrictions. In the letter scene, a pornographic film scene lasting a few seconds is shown. At the premiere, this meant that underage audience members had to leave the hall before the letter scene with its central, beautiful aria and were only allowed back in afterwards. So it is right. But a military parade on Red Square in Moscow is also shown on the screen while it is playing on the television downstairs in the living room.
Lenski (Taras Semenov) confronts Onegin (Yusuf Slavov). Tatjana (Dalia Besprozvany) covers her face with her hand, Olga is drunk and desperate (M.)
Source: ©Jörg Modrow/Jörg Modrow
When Olga meets her fiancé, the poet Lenski (Taras Semenov), and he brings his friend Eugene Onegin (Yosif Slavov) with him, a series of disastrous developments are triggered. Peri uses his resources carefully, always remaining focused on the dramatic progression. He consistently moves the action to our days, showing today’s young people, today’s soldiers and bodyguards, oligarchs and high-rise buildings with a shabby sandbox that are just around the corner. The qualities of the actors are impressive. Besprozvany stands out vocally and Slavov manages to stand up to her. Like the two main actors, Semenov and Otto do an excellent job singing and acting – which is no easy task. When Onegin hits on Olga after coldly rejecting Tatjana, he not only ruins his relationship with both sisters, but also destroys his friendship with Lenski.
Suicide as a service of friendship
The staging of two key scenes shows how cleverly the three-hour performance is worked out down to the last detail. When Tatjana wants to confess her love to Eugen via letter and messenger, she takes a topless selfie Polaroid. She throws it in the trash. But her sister steals it and gives it to Onegin, who shows it to the members of his street gang. Shame upon shame. Tatjana is devastated. Onegin rejects her. She flees and retreats again into the world of her reading – until she is publicly exposed with a couplet by the buffoon Triquet at a disco party.
Equally thrilling: the duel scene between Onegin and Lensky, which takes up the duel death of the Russian poet Pushkin, which is translated into today and plausibly interprets the thesis that it was a covert suicide. The duel takes place on the playground of the socially disadvantaged area in front of the high-rise buildings. Since Onegin is late, Lensky throws himself into the damp sand, dreams himself back to childhood and anticipates his death by pressing two hands with sand on his face. When Onegin shows up at Piro’s with a masked gang instead of an adjutant and puts the gun to Lenski’s head to liquidate him, Lenski kindly takes it out of his hand and does the job, and thus himself.
Princes to oligarchs
Unable to live with the guilt, Onegin becomes a mercenary and many years later returns from a war (everyone knows which one) in uniform and with a Kalashnikov over his shoulder to the two rooms where it all began. He still curses himself for the vain arrogance of his youth and is still in love with Tatjana. She has now married Prince Gremin (Lukas Gerber), who cuts a good and expensive figure here in the video on the screen as an oligarch in a suit. The family always travels with bodyguards in two large limousines, with a rambunctious son in their luggage. The oligarch replaces the nobleman so precisely that the question of social regression arises. When the bodyguards pick up a few last boxes from the almost empty apartment and Tatjana looks again for her book, which he has now found, there is a final encounter between her and Onegin, in which this time she rejects him.
Forum of the University of Music and Theater. Dates: January 17th, 19th, 20th, 7:30 p.m