Towards a pedagogical vision for opera : the musico-dramatic text and Stanislavsky's 1922 staging of Eugene Onegin

Abstract

Stanislavsky produced his first fully staged opera in May 1922. It was Pyotr Illic Tchaikovsky's (1840-93) Eugene Onegin, performed at the Onegin Hall within Stanislavsky's premises in Leontyevsky Lane. Baritone Pavel Rumyantsev, a young student at Stanislavsky's Opera Studio, explains that it was performed by young students from the Opera Studio, who 'acted in their ordinary clothing' with an audience 'sitting only a couple of paces removed from them' (Stanislavski and Rumyantsev 1975: 46). As can be seen in Figures 7.1 and 7.2, an orchestra could never possibly fit inside the Onegin Hall and the music was provided 'by a piano out in the part of the hall where the audience sat' (46). Indeed, both the venue and the scale of the production were small. Still, notwithstanding its dimensions, and in spite of the fact that any performance of Tchaikovsky's Onegin would have been subject to the highest expectation from audiences due to its reputation as one of the most celebrated and performed operas of the Russian repertoire, Stanislavsky's 1922 staging of the opera was a successful event (Benedetti 1999: 258-9).