Heartfelt and thought-provoking: Eugene Onegin, at the Royal Opera, reviewed

The curtain is already up at the start of Ted Huffman’s new production of Eugene Onegin. The auditorium is lit but the stage is in darkness and almost bare. Gradually, as Tchaikovsky’s prelude sighs and unfurls, the stage brightens and the theatre grows dim. But not before Onegin (Gordon Bintner) – tousle-headed and in a designer suit – has walked out, bowed to the house and retired to a chair at the back of the stage, to wait for the story to call him to life.

Russophiles have grumbled for years about the way Tchaikovsky trimmed and tidied Pushkin’s raffish first-person narrative into seven self-contained ‘lyrical scenes’. From the start, Huffman seems determined to tug and tear at those graceful patchwork pieces; to unpick the opera’s relationship with its source material, and with us, its audience.