Eugene Onegin, the most popular of Tchaikovsky's operas, is widely considered a theatrical masterpiece. Adapted from a novel in verse form by Aleksandr Pushkin, it is the tale of a jaded Russian aristocrat who scores the love of Tatyana, an attractive young girl of the provincial petty nobility. After years of aimless wandering, Onegin returns to St. Petersburg to find Tatyana much changed and married to a prince. Onegin falls in love, but this time she rejects him in favor of marital fidelity. The theme and treatment of Pushkin's text so strongly appealed to Tchaikovsky that he devoted himself to the opera's execution with single-minded fervor, drawing the libretto from the poet's own lines as far as possible. The composer's passionate attachment to the work was undoubtedly interlocked with analogous events in his private at the time of the opera's creation Tchaikovsky was involved in a disastrous marriage that swiftly led to his emotional breakdown. Today, Eugene Onegin is a staple of the operatic repertoire, moving audiences everywhere with its richly melodic score and imaginative orchestration. Musicians and music lovers will welcome this inexpensive high-quality edition, reprinted from an authoritative early score.
Author
Works of Russian writer Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin include the verse novel Eugene Onegin (1831), the play Boris Godunov (1831), and many narrative and lyrical poems and short stories. See also: Russian: Александр Сергеевич Пушкин French: Alexandre Pouchkine Norwegian: Aleksander Pusjkin Spanish:Aleksandr Pushkin People consider this author the greatest poet and the founder of modern literature. Pushkin pioneered the use of vernacular speech in his poems, creating a style of storytelling—mixing drama, romance, and satire—associated ever with greatly influential later literature. Pushkin published his first poem at the age of 15 years in 1814, and the literary establishment widely recognized him before the time of his graduation from the imperial lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo. Social reform gradually committed Pushkin, who emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals and in the early 1820s clashed with the government, which sent him into exile in southern Russia. Under the strict surveillance of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will, he wrote his most famous drama but ably published it not until years later. People published his verse serially from 1825 to 1832. Pushkin and his wife Natalya Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, later became regulars of court society. In 1837, while falling into ever greater debt amidst rumors that his wife started conducting a scandalous affair, Pushkin challenged her alleged lover, Georges d'Anthès, to a duel. Pushkin was mortally wounded and died two days later. Because of his liberal political views and influence on generations of Russian rebels, Pushkin was portrayed by Bolsheviks as an opponent to bourgeois literature and culture and a predecessor of Soviet literature and poetry. Tsarskoe Selo was renamed after him.
