Opera on 3

Debra Lew Harder and Ira Siff present a live performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, starring Iurii Samoilov and Asmik Grigorian. When bookish Tatiana meets Eugene she is immediately smitten and naively declares her feelings in a letter. He dismisses her, but years later and much too late realises he loves her back. The opera is based on Pushkin's verse novel, which reimagines the Byronic romantic anti-hero as the definitive bored Russian aristocrat caught between convention and ennui. Tchaikovsky, similarly, took western European operatic forms and transformed them into an authentic and undeniably Russian work. At the core of the opera is the young girl Tatiana, who grows from a sentimental adolescent into a complete woman in one of the operatic stage's most convincing character developments. Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin. Asmik Grigorian (soprano: Tatiana), Iurii Samoilov (baritone: Eugene Onegin), Stanislas de Barbeyrac (tenor: Lenski), Maria Barakova (mezzo: Olga), Larissa Diadkova (mezzo: Filippyevna), Alexander Tsymbalyuk (bass-baritone: Prince Gremin), Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Timur Zangiev (conductor).