Celebrated premiere in front of a full house

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It doesn't get more romantic than this. Peter Tchaikovsky's opera "Eugene Onegin" is one of the most frequently performed operas of all time. The premiere of this huge work has now been performed in front of a full house at the Forum of the Hamburg University of Music and Drama - a great success for one of the university's biggest ever productions.

About the performance
The title character falls in love with a young woman who prefers reading books to going to parties: But the two miss each other. There is little that is simple in this story about four young seekers of meaning, says director Matthias Piro, but: "'Eugene Onegin' is a piece that I love incredibly because of the music. I think it's incredibly well composed." Above all, for him the Tchaikovsky opera is a story about real people, not kings and tsars. It is his final production in music direction, "after all, the premiere is also graded. But I'm really looking forward to this premiere and I think the singers will give their very best."
A huge effort for a university: 50 musicians in the orchestra, plus a choir and soloists. This opera will be a sound experience, as you can hear from the overture. "It has this melancholy, this dark 19th century, this gloomy heaviness, which you can hear right from the overture," says conductor Constantin Schiffner.
What a contrast to the exuberant music. On stage, you look into a stuffy apartment with floral wallpaper and heavy velvet sofas with pompoms. Carpets hang on the walls and the TV is constantly flickering. "I wanted to bring a very tough, brutal realism to the stage and show that these are real people who are confronted with very real problems," says director Piro.

Five performances in total
"Eugene Onegin - Lyrical Scenes in Three Acts by Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky" will be performed in Russian with German surtitles. Admission is 22 EUR, concessions 10 EUR. Tickets (incl. HVV ticket, plus advance booking fee) are available in advance from Konzertkasse Gerdes, Rothenbaumchausee 77; by telephone on 040 44 02 98 or 040 45 33 26, www.konzertkassegerdes.de or at eventim.

Further performances in the Forum of the Musikhochschule on January 15, 17, 19 and 20, each at 7.30 pm. Detailed information can be found on the event pages of this homepage.