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EUGENE ONEGIN. Drawn from Pushkin by the composer and his librettist friend Konstantin Shilovsky, this is an exquisitely melancholy romance about a girl (Tatiana) who grows up and a cad (Onegin) who does not. The Bolshoi production dates from 1944, and the company treats it with veneration.
Chekhov could hardly have asked for a better autumnal mood than that of the opening at the manor house.
Among several casts, the singing of Bari tone Mazurok (Onegin) and Tenor Vla dimir Atlantov (Lensky) is solidly sono rous, and as Tatiana, Tamara Milashki-na sings with a full lyric voice that is gratifyingly free of the shrill vibrato heard from so many Russian sopranos.
PIQUE DAME. This is another mar velous blend of the Tchaikovsky-Push kin talents telling the unhappy tale of an obsessive gambler named Hermann who makes a pact with the dead to win a for tune. The singing on the first night (again Atlantov, Mazurok and Milash-kina) was excellent, but here, as on sev eral other occasions, the real stars were Conductor Yuri Simonov, 34, and his powerhouse orchestra, who seize upon each moment of melodrama. "Whatever is written in the score should be heard," says Simonov, echoing his idol, the late Arturo Toscanini. That goes for voices too. Simonov has a knack, for allowing key vocal phrases to come through, while keeping the orchestra down but precisely audible. This Pique Dame pro duction is a relatively youthful eleven years old; it too is evocative.
What Onegin and Pique Dame have in common with everything else done by the Bolshoi is a strong sense of es prit, unity and permanence. In the best Stanislavsky tradition, this is a troupe that performs as a dedicated ensemble.
That can be heard in the sheer might of sound that comes from the orchestra and chorus, which can mean only one thing: each member is performing as though his life depends on it. It can be found in the fact that the Bolshoi stars regularly perform at the Bolshoi, rarely on the international jet circuit.
Nor are those stars above lending strength to a performance by taking secondary roles now and then, as when Mazurok sings the small role of the sec retary of the Duma in Boris. During a rehearsal in New York, one singer be gan to chatter on stage. The others shooshed her. Stars at the Bolshoi, da.
Prima donnas, nyet.