Presenter: National Ballet of China
Choreography and libretto: John Cranko (after a verse-novel by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin)
Music: Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
Venue: National Centre for the Performing Arts-Opera House
Dates: February 27 – March 01, 2009 19:30
Price: VIP 480 380 280 180 120 RMB
Programme Introduction
Onegin is a ballet adaptation of Pushkin’s classic novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. Choreographed by John Cranko and using Tchaikovsky’s music, it is destined to be a huge theatrical success. The innocent charm of Tatiana and the flippancy and hypocrisy of Onegin is vividly demonstrated. Onegin integrates the merits of symphonic ballet and ballet drama and remains the best of Cranko’s works since its advent in 1965. The whole drama has a neat structure and the innovative choreography is a wonderful match to the music. Cranko’s Onegin is acclaimed as one of the most moving ballets in the 20th century. According to some critics, the work alone would establish Cranko as an esteemed master.
Synopsis
Act I, Scene 1 – Madame Larina’s Garden
Madame Larina, Olga, and the nurse are finishing the party dresses and gossiping about Tatiana’s coming birthday festivities. Madame Larina speculates on the future and reminisces about her own lost beauty and youth.
Lensky, a young poet engaged to Olga, arrives with a friend from St. Petersburg. He introduces Onegin, who, bored with the city has come to see if the country can offer him any distraction. Tatiana, full of youthful and romantic fantasies, falls in love with the elegant stranger, so different from the country people she knows. Onegin on the other hand sees in Tatiana only a naive country girl who reads too many romantic novels.
Act I, Scene 2 – Tatiana’s Bedroom
Tatiana, her imagination aflame with impetuous first-love, dreams of Onegin and writes him a passionate love-letter which she gives to her nurse to deliver.
Act II, Scene 1 -Tatiana’s Birthday
The provincial gentry have come to celebrate Tatiana’s birthday. They gossip about Lensky’s infatuation with Olga and whisper prophecies of a dawning romance between Tatiana and the newcomer. Onegin finds the company boring. Stifling his yawns, he finds it difficult to be civil to them: furthermore, he is irritated by Tatiana’s letter which he regards merely as an outburst of adolescent love. In a quiet moment, he seeks out Tatiana, and telling her that he cannot love her, tears up her letter. Tatiana’s distress, instead of awakening pity, merely increases his irritation.
Prince Gremin, a distant relative appears. He is in love with Tatiana, and Madame Larina hopes for a brilliant match, but Tatiana, troubled with own heart, hardly notices her kindly and elderly relation. Onegin, in his boredom, decides to provoke Lensky by flirting with Olga who light-headedly joins in his teasing. But Lensky takes the matter with passionate seriousness. He challenges Onegin to a duel.
Act II, Scene 2 – The Duel
Tatiana and Olga try to reason with Lensky, but his high romantic ideals are shattered by the betrayal of his friend and the fickleness of his beloved; he insists that the duel take place. Onegin kills his friend and for the first time his cold heart is moved by the horror of his deed. Tatiana realizes that her love was an illusion, and that Onegin is self-centered and empty.
Act III, Scene 1 – St. Petersburg
Onegin, having traveled the world for many years in an attempt to escape from his own futility, returns to St. Petersburg where he is received at a ball in the palace of Prince Gremin. Gremin has recently married, and Onegin is astonished to recognize in the stately and elegant young princess, Tatiana, the uninteresting little country girl whom he once turned away. The enormity of his mistake and loss engulfs him. His life now seems even more aimless and empty.
Act III, Scene 2- Tatiana’s Boudoir
Tatiana reads a letter from Onegin which reveals his love. Suddenly he stands before her impatient to know her answer. Tatiana sorrowfully tells him that although she still feels her passionate love of girlhood for him, she is now a woman, and that she could never find happiness with him or respect for him. She orders him to leave her forever.
National Ballet of China
Founded on 31 December 1959, the National Ballet of China is China’s only national ballet company. Its dancers and musicians are all graduates from professional dance academies and music conservatories across China. Since the day it was founded, the company has received continuous support from the Chinese government. In its early days, Russian ballet master Pyotr Gusev and other Russian teachers helped lay a solid foundation for the company using their experience in the Russian School of classical ballet. For more than 40 years, the National Ballet of China has introduced many outstanding classical ballets and contemporary ballet works to the Chinese audience. At the same time, it has attached great importance to creating a unique fusion between western classical ballet and Chinese culture. They have achieved this by creating their own ballets, which represents the varied characteristics of the Chinese nation. Today, the company has a broad repertoire and has successfully trained many generations of outstanding artists. Through international cultural exchange, The National Ballet of China has attracted the attention of the international ballet world.
(Source: ebeijing.gov.cn)
