Love comes too late. A story of passion and fear of commitment
When Eugene Onegin enters Tatyana's orderly life, he appears to her like a character from her novels. The young, inexperienced woman falls head over heels in love with the sophisticated bon vivant. But he rebuffs her affections - his restless lifestyle is not suitable for a long-term relationship. Years later, the two meet again: the mature Tatyana has entered into a marriage of convenience with the much older Prince Gremin and become a wealthy woman. Onegin is shocked to realize that Tatyana would have been the right woman for him after all. But now it is she who rejects his passionate confessions...
A year before The Maid of Orleans, Peter I. Tchaikovsky achieved his international breakthrough as a composer in 1879 with his setting of Pushkin's verse novel Eugene Onegin. His heartfelt sympathy for the unrequited love of Tatyana led Tchaikovsky to search for a musical expression that consciously sought to distance itself from the operatic pathos of his time. In his "Lyrical Scenes", he outlined the unfulfilled longings of a society that had grown weary of itself with a fine psychological sense, which director Michael Thalheimer portrays in his fourth work for Deutsche Oper am Rhein.
Premiere February 25, 2024
Further performances: March 1, 3, 9, 21 and 24, April 1, 4 and 19 and May 10, 2024
