Berlin Eugen Onegin with Barenboim, Villazon, Pape: A pantomime with puppets

A clown among the clowns: Rolando Villazón with the chorus

Eugen Onegin. Premiere. Berlin State Opera, September 27th 2008. Director and sets: Achim Freyer. Cast: Roman Trekel (Eugene Onegin), Anna Samuil (Tatiana), Rolando Villazón (Lenski), Maria Gortsevskaya (Olga), René Pape (Gremin). Conductor: Daniel Barenboim. Further information here.

“Freyer is boring” a man shouted from the first balcony towards the end of Act 1. Another loudly agreed with him, while several asked them to calm down. Daniel Barenboim looked entirely unfazed in the pit, waiting the 20 necessary seconds for them to quiet down and then continued the performance. Obviously such behaviour is unacceptable and disrespectful etc., but most of all it is hilarious. “It´s always like this at Berlin premieres, it´s sort of included in the ticket price” a lady told her rather shocked cousin from Essen in the bar. Exactly.

I have never seen an opera production quite like this one. Achim Freyer´s sets are exclusively black and white, with a completely naked stage except for some chairs as seen in the photographs below. Extensive production photographs may be seen here. All characters (except Gremin) are on stage for the duration of the opera and all are masked/dressed assembling clowns or pantomime figure including grotesque amounts of black/white face paint.

The choreography is very strict until the tiniest arm movement. Each character is allotted a stripe in the floor along which he/she perpetually moves slowly backwards and forwards. Just like a puppet show. All characters look straight forward with no facial expressions whatsoever and at no point did they look at each other.

The individual characters of Onegin, Lenski and Tatiana clearly do not matter here. They do not (inter)act like individuals, but puppets controlled by fate. Even after his death, Lenski continues pacing his allotted line - good news for Rolando Villazón fans, as he is on stage for three hours in a production centered around him. Robert Wilson´s abstract choreographies immediately comes to mind.

This dark, very restrictive puppet game of fate resonates rather well with both the Pusjkin-based storyline and Tchaikovski´s sumptuous music. The result: A rather beautiful and eery production leaving ample of space for Daniel Barenboim´s orchestra to shine.

However, one such production per theatre per season is enough, no matter how well-thought out and innovative the concept.

One would expect the singers to hate to participate in this production, however for some of the characters this strict choreography seems a strength, a fact Rolando Villazón has acknowledged in an interview prior to the premiere. He is one of the major benefactors, being forced to leave the often neurotic quality of his acting behind and express himself with his voice alone. In that respect he is extraordinary, and the clown setting obviously suits him well. He does have trouble hitting the high notes, if by hitting one understands "hitting on pitch", however his voice is so beautifully dark, that you´d almost believe him not to be a tenor (a compliment, obviously!).

Same applied to Gremin´s low notes, however that and the fact that he was made to look absolutetely ridiculous did not prevent house bass René Pape from being the best singer on stage by a considerable margin.

There is a slightly grained and wooden quality to Roman Trekel´s voice, and he was also audibly tired towards the end (who wouldn´t be with all that static arm-waving), but made a fine Onegin. Anna Samuil, also on the Salzburg Onegin DVD, repeated her beautifully sung Tatiana, though some may find her a bit monodimensional in both dramatic and vocal expression.

That Daniel Barenboim draws out the best of the Staatskapelle in a predictably rich-textured and dense reading is also no surprise for those familiar with him and/or his 2007 Salzburg Onegin. Curiously, he chose, as he did in Salzburg, to set an extraordinary slow tempo for the final scene, which almost took out all the intensity not present in Freyer´s production..

I don´t remember when a new production has not been booed at the Berlin State Opera – part of the game, I suppose. That the booing of Achim Freyer was somewhat louder than usual seems a minor point. After Achim Freyer´s initial solo bow, Daniel Barenboim (himself massively applauded) joined Freyer for his next solo bows, a rather nice way to show his support for the production, not that Freyer seemed to mind the boing, rather the contrary. After all, he has been a professional provocateur for at least 20 years. At the same time Rolando Villazón was jumping up and down, cheering wildly for Freyer in the background.

"A pantomime puppet game within loops of fate and black/white face paint" - how is that for a summary title?

The bottom line (scale of 1-5, 3=average):

Roman Trekel: 4
Rolando Villazon: 4-5
Anna Samuil: 4
René Pape: 5
Maria Gortsevkaya: 4-5

Achim Freyer´s production: 4-5

Daniel Barenboim: 5

Overall impression: 5