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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Paleau De Les Arts Valencia, 2011
Kristine Opolais (Tatyana), Lena Belkina (Olga), Artur Rucinski (Onegin), Dmitri Korchak (Lensky), Günther Groissböck (Gremin),Margarita Nekrasova (Filipyevna), Helene Schneiderman (Larina), Emilio Sanchez (Triquet), Toni Navarrate (Guillot), Aldo Heo (Captain), Simon Lim (Zaretsky) Orquestra De La Comunitat Valenciana & Cor De La Generalitat Valenciana, Omer Meir Wellber In his first year as Music Director of Valencia’s Palau de les Arts, the exciting young conductor Omer Meir Wellber has scored a triumph with Tchaikovsky’s beloved opera Eugene Onegin. Film maker Mariusz Trelinski’s timeless production consists of a series of surrealist tableaux of great suggestive beauty. Omer Meir Wellber leads a superb young cast headed by Artur Rukiński as Onegin and Kristīne Opolais as Tatyana. Picture: 16:9, HD Sound: DVD: DTS 5.1, PCM Stereo Running Time: 155 minutes Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese Available worldwide excl. USA and POLAND “The stand-out onstage, Dmitry Korchak...sing with impeccable style, looks handsome and can fill an empty stage with personality...Rucinski is velvet-voiced...but until Act 3 the singing is frustratingly uninflected...Opolais is exceptionally committed dramatically, not quite compensating for singing that, although pristine in tone, remains oddly anonymous.” International Record Review, May 2013 | 
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| |  | Recorded live at De Nederlandse Opera, June & July, 2011
Olga Savova (Madame Larina), Krassimira Stoyanova (Tatjana), Elena Maximova (Olga), Nina Romanova (Filipjevna), Bo Skovhus (Jevgeni Onjegin), Andrej Dunaev (Vladimir Ljenski), Mikhail Petrenko (Vorst Gremin), Peter Arink (Petrovitsj), Roger Smeets (Zaretski), Guy de Mey (Monsieur Triquet) & Richard Prada (Zapevalo) The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariss Jansons (conductor) & Stefan Herheim (stage director) Described by Tchaikovsky as ‘lyric scenes’, Eugene Onegin receives a spectacular reinterpretation from the Norwegian director Stefan Herheim. His productions create controversy and excitement around Europe, and here he takes Pushkin’s story of illusion, disaffection and frustrated love, and places the protagonists – world-weary Onegin and naïve, passionate Tatyana – in a triple temporal perspective, referencing the theatrical present, the period of the work’s composition, and the pageant of Russia’s history. Mariss Jansons, renowned for his mastery of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, conducts this performance from Amsterdam’s Muziektheater. ‘Put too much steam into Tchaikovsky’s score and it wilts. Be too shy and retiring, on the other hand, and the tragic momentum evaporates. Jansons sets us on a simmer and gradually turns the heat to boiling. It is magisterially paced, stunningly played and, seemingly effortlessly, Jansons captures every aching nuance. […] Herheim’s innovations are often throbbingly acute (and sometimes wickedly funny).’ The Times Extra features: Cast gallery 30-Minute Documentary Film Running time 151mins Region Code All regions Picture format 16:9 Anamorphic Sound format 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS Menu languages EN Subtitles EN/FR/DE/IT/ES “Forget any sense of intimacy in Tchaikovsky's lyrical scenes in this Eugene Onegin; director Stefan Herheim's approach is one of kaleidoscopic excess...No doubt about it, though, this is musically world-class. Mariss Janson's conducting, very imposing in the big moments...accords with the broad brushstrokes of Herheim's production. But the singers are vocally near ideal. Krassimira Stoyanova's Tatyana is thrillingly secure as well as vulnerable” BBC Music Magazine, May 2012 *** “Characters not only invade each other's memories but appear in fantasy form...Still, this isn't a Regie-Theater free for all...Herheim directs so many keen moments of character interactions that there's no danger of the opera lapsing into simplistic cliches...what a treat to hear an appealing, soft-grained version of [Skovhus's] voice in the title-role...what linguistic authority and depth of soul [Stoyanova] brings to the character!” Gramophone Magazine, July 2012 “Herheim sees the opera as a representation of memories...I suspect that this would be impossible to follow if you didn't know the opera beforehand...it's hard not to get caught up in the sheer chutzpah of the production...[Stoyanova] sails through the Letter Scene with plenty of fire...Star of the evening is the conductor Mariss Jansons. It's clear from the documentary that he loves the work..and he plays it with a rhythmic vitality” International Record Review, May 2012 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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This performance was recorded in Vienna in 1955. | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
This performance was recorded in Munich in 1954. Includes Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder cond. Klemperer with George London. | | Myto - MCD00248 (CD - 2 discs) Normally: $14.00 Special: $11.20 |
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Tamara Milashkina, Vladimir Atlantov, Yuri Mazurok & Yevgeny Nesterenko Choir & Orch Bolshoi Theatre, Gennady Cherkasov “This 1984 recording, previously unreleased outside Russia, shows the Bolshoi at its beefiest” BBC Music Magazine, May 2010 *** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Set & Costume Design - Michael Levine Lighting - Jean Kalman Choreographer - Serge Bennatham This is a star-led performance of one of the most popular romantic operas with the unrivalled pairing of Fleming and Hvorostovsky as the doomed lovers. Their onstage chemistry, emotional singing and outstanding acting make this a truly special and unique production. Thousands of movie-goers watched this production live in cinemas across Europe and the US in February 2007, when the production and the singing of the central characters met with great critical acclaim. Valery Gergiev, Russia's greatest living conductor, leads Russia's classic opera, with a thrilling account of Tchaikovsky's most intense and passionate score. Robert Carsen, described in the International Herald Tribune as 'one of the most sought-after stage directors on the operatic scene' creates an evocative and striking staging. Anne Midgette, reviewing this production in the New York Times, wrote, 'this remains one of the most extraordinarily beautiful stagings I've seen.' “Luxuriously cast but staged with restraint, Robert Carsen's production as revived by Peter McLintock has already reached wide audiences through the Met's live screenings. For one, Onegin really is central to the drama… Hvorostovsky's hero, always elegant in his long phrases, shows a human face to the rejection of the young and impressionable Tatyana and sensitively underlines the notion, heightened by Tchaikovsky's short duet of asides, that the senseless duel with his best friend Lensky might be stopped at any moment. ...Fleming comes into her own in the final blaze of passion, a truly cinematic scene between two charismatic stars. ...Gergiev conjures limpid but always well projected woodwind solos in the first act and powerful bass lines to emphasise lurking tragedy. He's also an inspiring presence in the short behind-the-scenes documentary.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2008 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Video Director - Brian Large Set & Costume Design - Michael Levine Lighting - Jean Kalman Choreographer - Serge Bennatham This is a star-led performance of one of the most popular romantic operas with the unrivalled pairing of Fleming and Hvorostovsky as the doomed lovers. Their onstage chemistry, emotional singing and outstanding acting make this a truly special and unique production. Thousands of movie-goers watched this production live in cinemas across Europe and the US in February 2007, when the production and the singing of the central characters met with great critical acclaim. Valery Gergiev, Russia's greatest living conductor, leads Russia's classic opera, with a thrilling account of Tchaikovsky's most intense and passionate score. Robert Carsen, described in the International Herald Tribune as 'one of the most sought-after stage directors on the operatic scene' creates an evocative and striking staging. Anne Midgette, reviewing this production in the New York Times, wrote, 'this remains one of the most extraordinarily beautiful stagings I've seen.' “Luxuriously cast but staged with restraint, Robert Carsen's production as revived by Peter McLintock has already reached wide audiences through the Met's live screenings. For one, Onegin really is central to the drama… Hvorostovsky's hero, always elegant in his long phrases, shows a human face to the rejection of the young and impressionable Tatyana and sensitively underlines the notion, heightened by Tchaikovsky's short duet of asides, that the senseless duel with his best friend Lensky might be stopped at any moment. ...Fleming comes into her own in the final blaze of passion, a truly cinematic scene between two charismatic stars. ...Gergiev conjures limpid but always well projected woodwind solos in the first act and powerful bass lines to emphasise lurking tragedy. He's also an inspiring presence in the short behind-the-scenes documentary.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2008 ****  BBC Music Magazine
DVD Choice - April 2008 |
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Recorded: Glyndebourne 1999 “Glyndebourne under the regime of director Graham Vick now looks ideal for Tchaikovsky's 'lyric scenes'. The bare wooden floors, open skies and distancing curtains of Richard Hudson's sets… allow us to focus on the intense characterisations. Will there ever be a Tatyana closer to the ideal of Pushkin's impulsive heroine than Elena Prokina? Every movement, every facial gesture speaks of a teenage girl - and later a barely-repressed society lady - with an intense inner life... Martin Thompson's Lensky fills the poet's raptures and despair with luminous candour, and Wojciech Drabowicz captures the torment of Onegin's too-late love for the girl he once rejected... Andrew Davis's buoyant conducting makes sure the uneventful opening scene and the final big duet move along without a hint of torpor or forced rhetoric.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2006 ***** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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"This is a magnificent achievement on all sides. In a recording that is wider in range, more immediate than almost any I can recall, the work comes to arresting life under Bychkov's vital direction ... Focile and Hvorostovsky prove almost ideal interpreters of the central roles."
Gramophone, December 1993 “This is a magnificent achievement on all sides.
In a recording that is wide in range, the work comes to arresting life under Bychkov's vital direction. Too often of late, on disc and in the theatre, the score has been treated self-indulgently and on too large a scale. Bychkov makes neither mistake, emphasizing the unity of its various scenes, never lingering at slower tempos than Tchaikovsky predicates, yet never moving too fast for his singers.
Focile and Hvorostovsky prove almost ideal interpreters of the central roles. Focile offers keen-edged yet warm tone and total immersion in Tatyana's character. Aware throughout of the part's dynamic demands, she phrases with complete confidence, eagerly catching the girl's dreamy vulnerability and heightened imagination in the Letter Scene, which has that sense of awakened love so essential to it. Then she exhibits Tatyana's new-found dignity on Gremin's arm and finally her desperation when Onegin reappears to rekindle her romantic feelings.
Hvorostovsky is here wholly in his element. His singing has at once the warmth, elegance and refinement Tchaikovsky demands from his antihero.
He suggests all Onegin's initial disdain, phrasing his address to the distraught and humiliated Tatyana – Focile so touching here – with distinction, and brings to it just the correct bon ton, a kind of detached humanity. He fires to anger with a touch of the heroic in his tone when challenged by Lensky, becomes transformed and single-minded when he catches sight of the 'new' Tatyana at the St Petersburg Ball. Together he, Focile and Bychkov make the finale the tragic climax it should be: indeed here this passage almost unbearably moving in this reading.
Shicoff has refined and expanded his Lensky since he recorded it for Levine. His somewhat lachrymose delivery suits the character of the lovelorn poet, and he gives his big aria a sensitive, Russian profile, full of much subtlety of accent, the voice sounding in excellent shape, but there is a shade too much self-regard when he opens the ensemble at Larin's party with 'Yes, in your house'. Anisimov is a model Gremin, singing his aria with generous tone and phrasing while not making a meal of it. Olga Borodina is a perfect Olga, spirited, a touch sensual, wholly idiomatic with the text – as, of course, is the revered veteran Russian mezzo Arkhipova as Filipievna, an inspired piece of casting. Sarah Walker, Covent Garden's Filipievna, is here a sympathetic Larina. Also from the Royal Opera comes Egerton's lovable Triquet, but whereas Gergiev, in the theatre, dragged out his couplets inordinately, Bychkov once more strikes precisely the right tempo.
There will also be a very special place in the discography of the opera for the vintage Russian versions, but as a recording they are naturally outclassed by the Philips, which now becomes the outright recommendation.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Teresa Kubiak (Tatyana), Bernd Weikl (Eugene Onegin), Stuart Burrows (Lensky), Julia Hamari (Olga), Nicolai Ghiaurov (Gremin), Enid Hartle (Filipyevna), Anna Reynolds (Larina), Michel Sénéchal (Triquet), Richard Van Allan (Zaretzky), William Mason (Captain) Orchestra of Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Georg Solti “Solti, characteristically crisp in attack, has plainly warmed to the score of Tchaikovsky's colourful opera...Here, for the first time, the full range of expression in this most atmospheric of operas is superbly caught” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition **** | | | (Sorry, download not available in your country) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Gramophone Magazine