"I will never give this opera to the State Theatre Administration before it is performed in the conservatory. I do not need a big scene with its routine and convention, with its incompetent directors and meaningless, though sumptuous, staging ... For "Onegin" I merely need...singers who will play simply, but well..."
From a letter of Pyotr Tchaikovsky The performance by Yuri Alexandrov gives the audience a new look at the familiar plot of the most popular Russian opera. The characters are moved into the atmosphere of Chekhov's time, becoming those intellectual "summer residents" of the late 19th century. Filled with lots of unusual director’s ideas, the action fascinates the audience with its "not opera-like" dynamism. Gradually, scene after scene, the original intention of the director becomes clear: everything that happens is formed by the imagination of the dreamy Tatyana, whose creative mind bizarrely connects the past, the present and the future. The textbook love story interpreted by Yuri Alexandrov regains its pristine freshness.