Onegin, Ballet by John Cranko
In the heart of the Italian capital, the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma stages a production of John Cranko's ballet Onegin, based on the verse novel written by Alexander Pushkin. With carefully curated and rearranged music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, this ballet contains all of the passion associated with the tradition of Russian Romantic writing and composing, telling a tale of love, loss and self-destruction. The first performance of Cranko's Onegin was on 13 April 1965 at the Staatstheater Stuttgart, Germany, staged by the Stuttgart Ballet.
Cranko, a South African dancer and choreographer, was working at the Royal Opera House in London in the 1950s when he came up with the idea of converting Tchaikovsky's famous opera, Eugene Onegin, into a ballet. Rejected by his employers at the time, he took the idea to Germany where the project gained momentum. Although the concept was always to use Tchaikovsky's music, Cranko didn't want any of the score from Eugene Onegin to feature in his ballet. Therefore, he asked a German composer, Kurt-Heinz Stolze, to come up with a newly arranged score based on Tchaikovsky's other works. The two had collaborated before and had done similar things to music by Antonio Vivaldi for choreography. Stolze used some piano pieces by Tchaikovsky and adapted them for dance interpretation. He also used some of the great Russian composer's orchestrated works, including parts of his symphonic fantasia Francesca da Rimini, for example. Consequently, although Cranko's Onegin is heavily informed by Tchaikovsky's opera, it doesn't share a single bar of music with the latter.
In act one of Onegin, Tatiana and her sister, Olga, are playing a simple folk game in the countryside. Eugene Onegin arrives from the city. While Tatiana falls for Onegin, he sees only a simple country girl. As the story develops, Onegin flirts with Olga, mostly to annoy his friend, Lensky. The two argue with fatal consequences. The story picks up years later in act three when Onegin is remorseful. He seeks to re-establish a connection with Tatiana who, in the intervening years, has become a princess after her marriage to Prince Gremin. Onegin wants to declare his love but he doesn't know how she will react and whether it will lead to further heartbreak given Tatiana is now a married woman.
Rome's Teatro Costanzi, as Teatro dell’Opera di Roma is also known, is a superb venue for such a tale of pride, regret and jealousy with highly technical choreography that evokes passion from the dancers and audience-goers alike.