Eugen Onegin

When Eugene Onegin enters Tatyana's orderly life, he appears to her like a character from her novels. The young, inexperienced woman falls head over heels in love with the urbane bon vivant. But he rejects her affection - his restless lifestyle is not suitable for a long-term relationship. Years later, the two meet again: the mature Tatyana has entered into a marriage of convenience with the much older Prince Gremin and has become a wealthy woman. Onegin is shocked to realise that Tatyana would have been the right one for him after all. But now she is the one who rejects his passionate confessions...

One year before "The Maid of Orleans", Peter I. Tchaikovsky achieved his international breakthrough as a composer with his setting of Pushkin's verse novel "Eugene Onegin" in 1879. His heartfelt sympathy for the unrequited lover Tatiana led Tchaikovsky to search for a musical expression that consciously sought to distance itself from the operatic pathos of its time. In his "Lyric Scenes" he outlined with a fine psychological sense the unfulfilled longings of a society that has grown tired of itself, which director Michael Thalheimer portrays in his fourth work for Deutsche Oper am Rhein.