Some of my readers may remember the production of Eugene Oniegin in this country, conducted by Henry J. Wood, during Signor Lago’s opera season in the autumn of 1892. It was revived in 1906 at Covent Garden, but without any regard for its national setting. Mme. Destinn, with all her charm and talent, did not seem at home in the part of Tatiana; and to those who had seen the opera given in Russia the performance seemed wholly lacking in the right, intimate spirit. It was interpreted better by the Moody-Manners Opera Company, in the course of the same year.
The subject was in many respects ideally suited to Tchaikovsky—the national colour suggested by a master hand, the delicate realism which Poushkin was the first to introduce into Russian poetry, the elegiac sentiment which pervades the work, and, above all, its intensely subjective character, were qualities which appealed to the composer’s temperament.
In May 1877 he wrote to his brother: “I know the opera does not give great scope for musical treatment, but a wealth of poetry, and a deeply interesting tale, more than atone for all its faults.” And again, replying to some too-captious critic, he flashes out in its defence: “Let it lack scenic effect, let it be wanting in action! I am in love with Tatiana, I am under the spell of Poushkin’s verse, and I am drawn to compose the music as it were by an irresistible attraction.” This was the true mood of inspiration—the only mood for success.
We must judge the opera Eugene Oniegin not so much as Tchaikovsky’s greatest intellectual, or even emotional, effort, but as the outcome of a passionate, single-hearted impulse. Consequently the sense of joy in creation, of perfect reconciliation with his subject, is conveyed in every bar of the music. As a work of art, Eugene Oniegin defies criticism, as do some charming but illusive personalities. It would be a waste of time to pick out its weaknesses, which are many, and its absurdities, which are not a few. It answers to no particular standard of dramatic truth or serious purpose. It is too human, too lovable, to fulfil any lofty intention. One might liken it to the embodiment of some captivating, wayward, female spirit which subjugates all emotional natures, against their reason, if not against their will. The story is as obsolete as a last year’s fashion-plate. The hero is the demon-hero of the early romantic reaction—“a Muscovite masquerading in the cloak of Childe Harold.” His friend Lensky is an equally romantic being; more blighted than demoniac, and overshadowed by that gentle and fatalistic melancholy which endeared him still more to the heart of Tchaikovsky. The heroine is a survival of an even earlier type. Tatiana, with her young-lady-like sensibilities, her superstitions, her girlish gush, corrected by her primness of propriety, might have stepped out of one of Richardson’s novels. She is a Russian Pamela, a belated example of the decorous female, rudely shaken by the French Revolution, and doomed to final annihilation in the pages of Georges Sand. But in Russia, where the emancipation of women was of later date, this virtuous and victimised personage lingered on into the nineteenth century, and served as a foil to the Byronic and misanthropical heroes of Poushkin and Lermontov.
The music of Eugene Oniegin is the child of Tchaikovsky’s fancy, born of his passing love for the image of Tatiana, and partaking of her nature—never rising to great heights of passion, nor touching depths of tragic despair, tinged throughout by those moods of romantic melancholy and exquisitely tender sentiment which the composer and his heroine share in common.
The opera was first performed by the students of the Moscow Conservatoire in March, 1879. Perhaps the circumstances were not altogether favourable to its success; for although the composer’s friends were unanimous in their praise, the public did not at first show extraordinary enthusiasm. Apart from the fact that the subject probably struck them as daringly unconventional and lacking in sensational developments, a certain section of purists were shocked at Poushkin’s chef-d’œuvre being mutilated for the purposes of a libretto, and resented the appearance of the almost canonized figure of Tatiana upon the stage. Gradually, however, Eugene Oniegin acquired a complete sway over the public taste and its serious rivals became few in number. There are signs, however, that its popularity is on the wane.
From childhood Tchaikovsky had cherished a romantic devotion for the personality of Joan of Arc, about whom he had written a poem at the age of seven. After the completion of Eugene Oniegin, looking round for a fresh operatic subject, his imagination reverted to the heroine of his boyhood. During a visit to Florence, in December, 1878, Tchaikovsky first approached this idea with something like awe and agitation. “My difficulty,” he wrote, “does not lie in any lack of inspiration, but rather in its overwhelming force. The idea has taken furious possession of me. For three whole days I have been tormented by the thought that while the material is so vast, human strength and time amount to so little. I want to complete the whole work in an hour, as sometimes happens to one in a dream.” From Florence, Tchaikovsky went to Paris for a few days, and by the end of December settled at Clarens, on the Lake of Geneva, to compose his opera in these peaceful surroundings. To his friend and benefactress, Nadejda von Meck, he wrote expressing his satisfaction with his music, but complaining of his difficulty in constructing the libretto. This task he had undertaken himself, using Joukovsky’s translation of Schiller’s poem as his basis. It is a pity he did not adhere more closely to the original work, instead of substituting for Schiller’s ending the gloomy and ineffective last scene, of his own construction, in which Joan is actually represented at the stake surrounded by the leaping flames.
Tchaikovsky worked at The Maid of Orleans with extraordinary rapidity. He was enamoured of his subject and convinced of ultimate success. From Clarens he sent a droll letter to his friend and publisher Jurgenson, in Moscow, which refers to his triple identity as critic, composer, and writer of song-words. It is characteristic of the man in his lighter moods:
“There are three celebrities in the world with whom you are well acquainted: the rather poor rhymer ‘N. N.’; ‘B. L.,’ formerly musical critic of the “Viedomosti,” and the composer and ex-professor Mr. Tchaikovsky. A few hours ago Mr. T. invited the other two gentlemen to the piano and played them the whole of the second act of The Maid of Orleans. Mr. Tchaikovsky is very intimate with these gentlemen, consequently he had no difficulty in conquering his nervousness and played them his new work with spirit and fire. You should have witnessed their delight.... Finally the composer, who had long been striving to preserve his modesty intact, went completely off his head, and all three rushed on to the balcony like madmen to soothe their excited nerves in the fresh air.”
The Maid of Orleans won little more than a succès d’estime. There is much that is effective in this opera, but at the same time it displays those weaknesses which are most characteristic of Tchaikovsky’s unsettled convictions in the matter of style. The transition from an opera so Russian in colouring and so lyrical in sentiment as Eugene Oniegin to one so universal and heroic in character as The Maid of Orleans, seems to have presented difficulties. Just as the national significance of The Oprichnik suffered from moments of purely Italian influence, so The Maid of Orleans contains incongruous lapses into the Russian style. What have the minstrels at the court of Charles VI. in common with a folk-song of Malo-Russian origin? Or why is the song of Agnes Sorel so reminiscent of the land of the steppes and birch forests? The gem of the opera is undoubtedly Joan’s farewell to the scenes of her childhood, which is full of touching, idyllic sentiment.