After a December of
Nutcracker performances and an Opening Gala in January, the San Francisco Ballet opened up their regular season with the world premiere of an ambitious, full-length story ballet based on Alexander Pushkin's 1830s verse novel,
Eugene Onegin. In Russia, the book is a standard, revered classic that everyone reads in school, but outside that country the story is mostly known from Tchaikovsky's 1879 opera, which has one of the greatest musical scores he ever composed. San Francisco Ballet's new version, co-commissioned by the Joffrey Ballet, is the work of former SF Ballet dancer and choreographer Yuri Possokhov to new music by Ilya Demutsky. The result was a triumphant addition to the many films, plays, operas, and ballets that have already tackled the story of a precociously jaded young antihero who breaks a young woman's heart and kills his best friend in a senseless duel.
(All production photos are by Lindsey Rollo.)
The ballet's four acts are framed by abstract visions of the seasons, beginning with a long ensemble dance representing the Spirits of Spring, headed by the reliably fabulous Nikisha Fogo. Although these interludes seem to belong to another ballet altogether, they are entertaining in their own right, with gorgeous costumes by Tim Yip highlighted by casually sexy outfits for the Boys of Summer.
In the Tchaikovsky opera, the 17-year-old Tatiana is the main character, who falls hopelessly in love with the sophisticated city slicker Onegin. In this version, as in Pushkin's poem, the central emphasis is on the 18-year-old Onegin who casually spurns Tatiana after she confesses her deep infatuation in a letter. Katherine Barkman was fine as the bookish, lovelorn young woman but a bit too recessive, as she was often upstaged by the other characters, particularly Joseph Walsh as Onegin.
I recently read the original Pushkin poem-novel, and it was a surprisingly rich experience. (
Click here for the 1881 Henry Spaldig translation at Gutenberg Press.) Midway, there is a scene detailing Tatiana's prescient nightmare of being abducted by surreal creatures before watching Onegin slay Lensky with a knife. The scene is omitted in the Tchaikovsky opera but is one of the the ballet's dark-hued highlights.
The two subsidiary characters of the young poet Lensky and his fiance Olga, Tatiana's younger sister, often steal the show in this tale, and they did so once again thanks to the energetic, entrancing dancing of Wei Wang and Wona Park.
At first the musical score by Ilya Demutsky sounded bizarrely old-fashioned to me, rather like film music from an earlier decade. However, it became more interesting as the ballet progressed, varying dramatically from scene to scene, and it struck me as a real accomplishment. By the time the tragic duel occurred, the synthesis of music and dance felt seamless.
The last act has Eugene returning to Russia after journeying in self-exile abroad for eight years and going to a fancy ball where the hostess is none other than country bumpkin Tatiana transformed into fashionable society woman after marriage to an old general. This finally allows for a full-on romantic duet for Tatiana and Onegin in Possokhov's choreography.
The finale featured the incomparable Joseph Walsh dancing in despair with the Winter Spirits, having screwed up his own life and that of others irreversibly. Congratulations to all involved at the SF Ballet for delivering a successful new story ballet.
