An opera for Putin: Eugene Onegin comes out queer

An opera for Putin: Eugene Onegin comes out queer

Opera

norman lebrecht

April 01, 2024

New York’s Heartbeat Opera is staging a queer version of Tchaikovsky’s drama.

Director Dustin Wills (pictured) says: ‘There’s a story here screaming to come out that I’ve never seen: the closest was Krzysztof Warlikowski’s “Brokeback Onegin” [in Munich], with lots of naked men in cowboy hats. I didn’t want to hit people over the head like that. Sexuality exists on a spectrum. Tchaikovsky’s recently-released letters show a very sophisticated individual dealing with his particular (for the time) issues with sexuality. That complexity brings a lot more to ‘Onegin’ than ‘boy meets girl, boy dumps girl, someone gets shot.’ In directing this, I think about my favorite writer, Lorca: sexually fluid, writing in a coded way with so much desire compacted together. All this desire eating these people alive, and they don’t know what to do with it! But it’s much more than just, ‘Oh — they’re gay!’ — which is pretty uninteresting. I like to think that Tchaikovsky has bisected himself into Onegin and Tatiana: each of them has what the other one needs, but can’t ever get it. So Olga and Lenski become the victims of this world that has placed this structure round the, keeping them from being the way they need to be.’

More here.

Comments

  • Used to be dirigent says:

    So interesting So fresh So reviving Opera is still alive! Thank you, extraordinary human being! (no)

    • Andrew Powell says:

      Sarcasm, I presume. Yes, the gay Munich staging Wills refers to is 17 years old now. He doesn’t “want to hit people over the head like that” because, and only because, doing so would reveal a director with no new ideas. This augurs well (albeit not for the New York staging): concept opera is finally spiraling out so far, after 40 years progressive foraging, lunacy and cliché, that a return to the dramaturgical truth of each work can be the only way forward.

  • Herbie G says:

    Will threre be on end to this claptrap? One of the finest operas ever, which is perfectly capable of filling opera houses without these idiots’ ‘new realisations’.

  • Chet says:

    Well the duel is a phallic symbol of two Best Buddies Forever shooting loaded “guns” at each other and Onegin penetrates Lensky. Obvious.

    But I digress:

    Everyone knows Pushkin is part African.

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/dec/19/pushkins-pride-how-the-russian-literary-giant-paid-tribute-to-his-african-ancestry

    So Onegin is part Black, not part gay.

    Pushkin bisected himself into Onegin and Tatiana: each of them half White and half Black, together, they complete each other racially.

    That’s how Dustin Wills ought to stage this opera: A DEI struggle against an oppressive White world. Look at the photo, see how white that world is in that winter scene of the duel and how black Onegin is dressed symbolically against all that whiteness? Obvious.

    • IP says:

      And you are not directing for a major company? Not yet?

    • Yuri K says:

      Pushkin was a great womanizer and there is no reason to equalize him with the character he created, Onegin. I am sure Pushkin himself would not have looked for an excuse to run away from Tatiana; instead, he’d seduced her.

  • Save the MET says:

    It’s Pushkin’s drama, with Tchaikovsky’s libretto which does not stray from the author’s tale. With the continual shark jumping, It seems it is time to stop the 21st c. DEI silliness and respect the author’s intent.

  • OnDeck says:

    They forgot to mention that this company casts musical actors rather than opera singers. DEI-based, of course. Major bonus if you’re queer!

  • J Barcelo says:

    I know what I need but I can’t get: opera performed in a manner the composer envisioned.

  • Paul Brownsey says:

    They could stage it as an episode in the life of Tchaikowsky, as Scottish Opera once performed Turandot as an episode in the life of Puccini (a production in which, at the end, he spurned the ice princess).

    • Maria says:

      But you need to be told all that clap trap and read into something that isn’t there. If people would only start by doing what is on the page!

  • IP says:

    But he was, wasn’t he. Just like the composer, his brother, and most of their friends. As Andy would say, they all had a problem.

  • M.Arnold says:

    Next is La Boheme where, you know, these 4 guys live in a small room with only one bed…

    • Yuri K says:

      I bet soon someone will expand the meaning of “cosi fan tutte”. Gugliemo will marry Ferrando, Dorabella will marry Fiordiligi, and Despina will go for phalloplasty operation.

  • kaa says:

    I went to the rehearsal. Regardless of the director’s interpretation and I am as “reactionary” as they get in this regard, the singing was stellar. The Tatyana was wonderful as was the Onegin. The orchestration as ever was unbelievably gorgeous. With limited forces they get marvelous colors.
    I am big fan of this company having seen almost everything they had done and despite my reactionary tendencies about productions, when directors are intelligent and love the music the results can be very moving. One should try to see/hear the Fidelio which I think is on the Met museum website.

    https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-live-arts/digital-premieres/heartbeat-opera-fidelio.

    The composer went to various prisons and trained a few prison choirs to do the prisoner’s chorus. The video were wonderful and the music; well they are not the Met chorus, but it induced goose bumps. What comes across in this group is that they love opera, and unlike contemporary directors in major houses who I think hate opera, the directors love the music.

  • zandonai says:

    Are they doing this in the Queens?

  • David A. Boxwell says:

    I’m so there for the “French Letter Scene.”

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