Eugene Onegin, << yoo JEEN ohn YAY gihn, >> is an opera by the Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. The libretto (text) was written by Tchaikovsky and his friend Konstantin Shilovsky. The composer based the opera on Eugene Onegin (1825-1832), a novel in verse by the Russian author Alexander Pushkin. The opera was first performed in a student production in Moscow in 1879.
Loading the player...Polonaise from Eugene Onegin
The opera’s action is set during the 1820’s. The title character is a sophisticated young man. In the first act, Onegin visits his friend, a country landowner named Lensky. Onegin meets a neighbor girl named Tatiana, who falls in love with him. She declares her passion in a letter she writes to Onegin, but he coldly rejects her. At a ball in the second act, Onegin flirts with Lensky’s fiancée, and Lensky challenges him to a duel. Onegin kills his friend in the duel. He then leaves the country district, filled with guilt.
In the third and final act, Onegin meets Tatiana again years later, this time in the city of St. Petersburg. She has grown into a beautiful woman. Onegin falls in love with the older Tatiana, and she returns his affections. But Tatiana is now married to Prince Gremin, an elderly man whom she refuses to betray for Onegin. Tatiana leaves the emotionally shattered Onegin forever as the opera ends.
The best-known aria in Eugene Onegin is “Even if it means I perish,” sung by Tatiana in her letter-writing scene. The most famous instrumental pieces in the opera are the waltz performed during the ball and the polonaise in the third act. Both works have become popular concert selections.
See also Pushkin, Alexander ; Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich .
