SFO: The Action in the Orchestra Pit

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I returned to the War Memorial Opera House to use our subscription tickets for the San Francisco Opera (SFO) performance of Robert Carsen’s staging of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin. Some readers may recall that I had few positive impressions when I attended the opening night performance. However, our subscription seats afford an excellent view of the orchestra pit. Since conductor Vassilis Christopoulos was one of the few performers to come away from opening night unscathed, I relished the affordances of a better view of how he handled Tchaikovsky’s score.

Like SFO Music Director Eun Sun Kim, Christopoulos brought a well-considered approach to the layout of the instrumentalists. Most important was his decision to have the first and second violins face each other. In just about any setting, whether of chamber music, orchestral music, or opera, Tchaikovsky seldom (if ever) treats the second violins as “secondary.” There are consistently rich textures in the way he writes for a string ensemble, and it is clear that he wanted the listener to be aware of every thread. In this case the remainder of the layout placed the violas beside the second violins, the cellos opposite the violas, and the basses behind the cellos. The harp was situated at the rear on the left side (from the audience point of view). Winds occupied the center of the rear with the brass to the right of them and the timpani at the far end.

Thus, while many of the vocalists still struggled to be heard in the absence of any useful reflective acoustic surfaces, the instrumentalists rose to the call of duty to breathe life into the drama through their expression of Tchaikovsky’s rich palette of denotational motifs. As was observed in my previous account, Tchaikovsky was as attentive to the needs of narrative as Alexander Pushkin had been, meaning that the music gave a clearer account than almost anything Carsen brought to the stage. One particularly apposite case in point can be found in how the music deals with its two dance episodes.

The entire opera is structured in three acts. Both the second and third acts begin with dance scenes. In the second act it is a waltz, while a polonaise begins the final fact. These two approaches to the dance provide a rich social context for the narrative that is unfolding.

Tatyana (soprano Evgenia Muraveva) is the daughter of a landowner. Thus, while she is not an aristocrat, hers is a family of authority; and they have both the wealth and power to celebrate her name day with a grand ball. That ball is the setting for the second act, and it begins with one of Tchaikovsky’s most popular waltz compositions.

However, beyond the dancing, what is interesting is how much chatter the libretto provides for this scene. Everyone is talking about everyone else (all while dancing and with children running in and out among the dancers); and much of the attention is directed at either Tatyana or Onegin (bass-baritone Gordon Bintner). All that chatter leads to increasing tension, particularly involving Tatyana’s sister Olga (mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina); and that tension culminates with the fatal duel that takes place in the following scene.

Onegin (Gordon Bintner) at the statelier affair held by Prince Gremin (Ferruccio Furlanetto) (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

Time passes (as the cliché goes); and, at the beginning of the third act, we are now in the palace of Prince Gremin (bass Ferruccio Furlanetto), who has married Tatyana. This time the opening music is a polonaise (another familiar Tchaikovsky selection). However, in this particular setting, the dance is performed in silence (an indication of the qualities of a well-bred aristocrat). As I used to joke with friends, “Everything happens during a waltz; nothing happens during a polonaise.”

The point is that the narrative behind each of those two acts is established by the context set by the behavior at a grand ball. Sadly, Carsen seems to have been entirely unaware of the symmetry that Tchaikovsky established to provide context for the overall narrative. Indeed, there is no polonaise to begin the opera’s final act. Instead, Carsen uses it as “filler” between the end of the second act and the beginning of the third, where all we see is Onegin moping over the consequences of the duel he has just fought.

There was only so much that Christopoulos could do to convey the rich significations of Tchaikovsky’s dance music; but, at the end of the day, the orchestra pit told us far more about the narrative than pretty much everything that was taking place on stage.