Review: The Royal Ballet in Onegin with “epic and thrilling” scenes from Marianela Nuñez and Reece Clarke
Jonathan Gray enjoys the wonderful sweep and theatricality of John Cranko’s Onegin at the Royal Opera House, with passionate, complex and fully rounded performances.
| Title | Onegin |
| Company | The Royal Ballet |
| Venue | The Royal Opera House, London |
| Date | 22 January 2025 |
| Reviewer | Jonathan Gray |
Created for Stuttgart Ballet in 1965, John Cranko‘s Onegin celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. The ballet is performed around the globe and has become the choreographer’s most popular full-length work. To mark the anniversary The Royal Ballet have staged a revival of Onegin at Covent Garden that opened on 22 January.
The work has become something of a fixture at Covent Garden, where it has received more than 100 performances since the company added it to the repertoire in 2000, but it was admired in the UK before then thanks to its presentation during the 1980s by London Festival (now English National) Ballet. This included performances from a spectacular array of star ballerinas such as Marcia Haydée (who created the role of Tatiana), Lynn Seymour, Patricia Ruanne, Natalia Makarova, Ekaterina Maximova and Eva Evdokimova. Those were the days!
It’s not hard to understand why Onegin has become so popular. Performed to an arrangement by Kurt-Heinz Stolze of attractive music by Tchaikovsky and based on Alexander Pushkin’s Russian verse novel Eugene Onegin, Cranko adapted his ballet into a story of unrequited love that not only appeals to dancers eager to portray the leading roles of Eugene Onegin and Tatiana, but audiences, who are swept along by the drama, especially during several dramatic pas de deux. In addition to all this, there is the tragic story of another pair of lovers, Onegin’s friend, Lensky, and Tatiana’s sister, Olga, and there is dancing and characterisation aplenty for the corps de ballet in not just one, but two ballroom scenes. Despite some flaws, Onegin has a wonderful sweep and a theatricality that can make it a rewarding experience, especially when the ballet is performed well.
The opening night cast at Covent Garden was a good one, and included no fewer than four principal dancers in lead roles. In the role of Tatiana, Marianela Nuñez, a ballerina in her prime, certainly has the standing of her illustrious predecessors. Throughout the ballet, every moment of her dancing and acting was beautifully and carefully thought through, and although this can sometimes make her performance seem lacking in spontaneity, Nuñez clearly demonstrated to the audience the change in Tatiana from lovesick young woman to society lady. Moreover, she pulled out all the stops during her final duet with Onegin, so much so that the scene became an epic and thrilling battle of conflicting emotions that kept you guessing the outcome until the end of the ballet – would Tatiana succumb to Onegin or remain resolute in her absolute rejection of his advances?
Matching Nuñez all the way was Reece Clarke as Onegin. Tall and handsome, a marvellously strong partner and a beautiful dancer (Onegin’s first solo has seldom been danced with such lavish épaulement and port de bras), I especially admired the way Clarke did not attempt to disguise the unattractive side to Onegin’s character, and how, in the last act, he conveyed Onegin’s crestfallen realisation of all he had lost following his rejection of Tatiana. This was a complex, fully rounded and entirely successful reading of a role that can sometimes seem little more than a two-dimensional bad guy.
Likewise, William Bracewell was terrific as Lensky, acting passionately and dancing with a relish for his choreography. I was particularly struck at the way Bracewell, through some stunningly off-kilter turns and balances during his melancholic solo, projected the anguish and dejection Lensky feels directly before his fatal duel with Onegin. Bracewell’s Olga was Akane Takada, who brought sweetness and a deft lightness of touch to her performance.
In addition to the principals, Lukas Bjørneboe Braendsrød gave a fine account of the role of Prince Gremin, especially in the loving duet in the last act with his wife, Tatiana. As Madame Larina, Elizabeth McGorian was a warm-hearted mother to Tatiana and Olga. The ensemble dancing of the corps de ballet was admirable throughout. Onegin remains in The Royal Ballet’s repertoire, with numerous cast changes, until 12 June. It would be a shame to miss it.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
Thank you for this great review – if only I could’ve been there… Onegin is one of my most favourite and memorable narrative ballets I’ve ever seen.
It is such a fabulous treasure of a ballet, that I am so sad that it won’t be available on live cinema relay.
Agree. I haven’t seen the ballet in a theatre for many years but watching it in the cinema, live, is the next best thing. So few recordings… rights issues?