The Royal Opera

An opera full of poignancy and exquisite sensitivity to the nuances of growing up and wrestling to understand your emotions, Eugene Onegin is an inspiring vehicle for Kasper Holten’s first production for The Royal Opera. Working with the Danish set designer Mia Stensgaard, whose design hallmark is clean, strong images ripe with emotion, and fielding a brilliant cast (including Simon Keenlyside in the title role), Holten will provide a fresh reading of this classic opera.

‘Lyrical Scenes’ was Tchaikovsky’s description of Eugene Onegin: his tender exploration of a young girl’s awakening passion, her rejection by the aloof Onegin and her ultimate choice of honour over true love is far more intimate in tone than the archetypal grand Russian opera.

Holten himself describes the opera as ‘full of poetry and melancholy, encapsulating the fragile and turbulent emotions of youth, self-realization and finally the yearning to go back and undo what cannot be undone’.

Sung in Russian. Opera in three acts.