EUGENE ONEGIN MITEM 16
Scenes from the novel
Pushkin’s most well-known work, the verse novel Eugene Onegin, was referred to, even by his contemporaries, as “the encyclopaedia of Russian life,” and it is still considered one of the greatest accomplishments of 19th-century Russian literature and Russian Romanticism. The novel has been interpreted in several ways and adapted in several forms. Tchaikovsky, for example, composed one of his most renowned operas on the basis of Pushkin’s novel. It has also been adapted for film and ballet, but few theatrical companies have ever endeavoured to adapt the monumental novel for the stage.
Rimas Tuminas, a remarkable creative mind in both Lithuanian and Russian theatrical life, enjoys working with the texts of Russian classics and considers Pushkin’s Onegin a genuine source of inspiration. This is why as artistic director of Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre, one of Russia’s most established theatres, he endeavoured both to preserve the mentality of the novel and to come up with a new interpretation: Onegin is, on one hand, the story of an unrequited love; on the other hand, it is a poetic-philosophical confession about the meaning of human life.
“I wanted to avoid stereotypes,” the director explains. “Working on Eugene Onegin, I was investigating the symphony of the various layers of its meaning in order to be able to grasp the emotional and musical harmony of this poetic novel.”