Don’t blame Tchaikovsky if his opera “Eugene Onegin” proved to be the least exciting part of the Met’s opening night.
Monday’s gala sprang to life only for a few moments before the first downbeat, when a quartet of protesters from Queer Nation yelled from the balcony, “Putin, end your war on Russian gays!”
They were speaking out against conductor Valery Gergiev and soprano Anna Netrebko, the “Onegin” headliners who’d endorsed the Russian president’s election before he signed last summer’s anti-gay legislation.
The outburst delayed the performance by less than five minutes — but it might have been better had it never begun. Sluggish, clumsy conducting and a listless production were redeemed only by a handful of stylish vocal performances.
“Onegin” focuses not so much on its title character, a snobbish 1800s Russian aristocrat, but on Tatiana, a young woman who falls in love with him and pours out her feelings in a long, heartfelt letter.
He rejects her, and they go their separate ways, until years later when Tatiana has blossomed into a glamorous society hostess and Onegin, too late, reconsiders his feelings for her.
For this, her third consecutive Met opening, Netrebko sent her voluptuous soprano surging like thick cream through Tatiana’s lush melodies. Even more impressive, she damped down her electric stage presence to portray the mousy, pathologically shy heroine. In a simple ecru dress and girlish braid, she even looked plain.
Matching her vocally was Piotr Beczala as the young poet Lensky, his silvery tenor throbbing with emotion in his final aria before his mortal duel with Onegin.
As the antihero himself, baritone Mariusz Kwiecien looked every inch the elegant dandy and caressed the music with suave legato. The voice, though, sounded a size too small for the vast Met.
These fine artists were working in a vacuum, though, since Gergiev’s leaden conducting reduced romantic arias to dirges.
The staging was conceived by director Deborah Warner and then handed over to her longtime collaborator, actress Fiona Shaw who, due to previous commitments, missed half the rehearsal period. Not surprisingly, it looked unfinished. Even worse, it was ugly and cheap — the whole first act was set in what looked like storage shed.
The brief opening protest felt all the more poignant because Tchaikovsky was himself a gay man in oppressive 1800s Russia. How ironic that, even in 2013 New York, the Met can’t do him justice!