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Music
Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky
Arrangement
and
Orchestration
Kurt-Heinz
Stolze
Libretto
John Cranko
after a
verse-novel by
Alexander
Pushkin
Designs
Jürgen
Rose
Lighting
Steen Bjarke
Tatiana
Alina Cojocaru
Eugene
Onegin
Johan Kobborg
Lensky
Ivan Putrov
Olga
Sarah Lamb
Madame
Larina
Genesia Rosato
Prince
Gremin
Bennet Gartside |
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Royal Opera House
16 March - 12 April 2007 |
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John
Cranko's Onegin
is a strange creation. It
is, by turns, a choreographic
wonder, opening up large emotional
possibilities for its dancers,
and a bland collage of stock
characters and well-worn 19th
Century dance numbers.
The greatness of this curate's
egg of a piece lies in its
choreography for the lead
roles, Eugene Onegin and Tatiana
- the girl whose advances
the cocky young man, stalemated
by his own fossilized pride,
cruelly spurns, only to change
his mind when it is too late
- when she has committed herself
to a sterile but comfortable
marriage with another man.
Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru,
a probably incomparable pairing
in today's ballet world, exploit
the possibilities of Cranko's
choreography with sophistication
and daring. Kobborg is mesmerising
as the rake who provokes the
young girl to an hysterical
frenzy of desire - and then
dismisses her with terrible,
almost death-dealing, finality.
Cojocaru's deeply moving Tatiana
begins as all carefree, bookish
innocence, morphs effortlessly
into one possessed - recklessly
staking everything to get
Onegin - and ends up as the
stately married woman who
forces herself to put fidelity
before passion. Both these
prodigiously talented dancers
have developed immensely in
the last two years or so:
he from a technically perfect
dancer whose emotional range
and subtlety were frankly
limited; she from a heavenly
gazelle who looked incongruous
when cast as a mature, ethically-responsible,
socially-embedded woman.
Both have in spades what they
used to lack. Cojocaru is
spellbinding as she regally
dismisses Onegin at the end
of the third act while also
blasting us with her trembling
and crumpled inner world.
Onegin's despair at his irreversible
folly leaves him - and his
audience - on a rack. Kobborg
and especially Cojocaru are
- and one should use the term
sparingly - becoming very
great dancers.
Their performances are so
powerful that it would be
easy to overlook the other
stars of the evening - Sarah
Lamb as Olga, Tatiana's sister,
and Ivan Putrov as Lensky.
Both have to make do with
gestural, clichÈd choreography.
But Lamb dances with freshness
and clarity, tempts Lensky
with wicked sensuality, and
does not neglect to imbue
her role with the anxious
self-consciousness that it
needs. All appears Elysian
in Olga's and Lensky's world
- but from the outset they
convince us, presciently,
that it might not stay that
way.
Simon May |
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