Peter Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin (Arthaus DVD) 2-CD set

This DVD presents a lavish and naturalistic staging of Eugene Onegin performed in Moscow, the city where the work had its world premiere on 29 March 1879. In their production, the Bolshoi not only adopted a traditional music theatre approach, they also successfully revived a previous and popular production. A feast of music is spread before the audience for their pure enjoyment. The gifted singers are so secure in their command of the Russian idiom that the music’s inner content, its lyrismo, is constantly at the fore. Vladimir Redkin with his profound, glowing baritone takes the title-role, and Maria Gavrilova sings Tatyana, her soprano gleaming at the top, is almost unequalled for warmth and radiance.

This Eugene Onegin is a sumptuously arrayed feast of singing. But it is also a feast of good theatre, because it concentrates on the most important element of the tale it tells; namely the tragedy of the human soul and its suffering. The setting and costumes are naturalistic and the drama develops its intensity primarily from the music and the text.