Onegin

As the characterization of the opera as "lyrical scenes" shows, the poet offers no substantial work, but follows closely, often even word for word, Pushkin's epic tale, with which one must be fully acquainted -- as is the case with everybody in Russia -- in order to be able to follow the opera properly.

Act I.

Eugene Onegin has been called from a wild life of pleasure to his sick uncle, of whose property he takes possession after the uncle's sudden death. He has brought with him from the big city a profound satiety of all enjoyments and a deep contempt for the society of mankind in his solitary country seat. Here, however, he forms a friendship for a young fanatic, the poet Lenski.

Through him he is introduced to Larina, a woman who owns an estate. Her two daughters, Olga and Tatiana, correspond to the double nature of their mother, whose youth was a period of sentimentality in which she allowed herself to be affected like others by Richardson's novels, raved over Grandison, and followed the wild adventures of Lovelace with anxious thrills.

Life later had made her rational, altogether too rational and insipid. Olga now has become a cheerful, superficial, pleasureful silly young girl; Tatiana, a dreamer whose melancholy is increasing through reading books which her mother had once used. Lenski is betrothed to Olga. Tatiana recognizes at her first sight of Onegin the realization of her dreams. Her heart goes out to meet him and in her enthusiasm she reveals all her feelings in a letter to him. Onegin is deeply stirred by this love; a feeling of confidence in mankind that he had not known for such a long time awakens in him.

But he knows himself too well. He knows that every faculty as a husband is departing from him. And now he considers it his duty not to disappoint this maiden soul, to be frank. He refuses her love. He takes the blame on himself, but he would not have been the worldly wise man if his superiority to the simple country child had not been emphasized chiefly on this account. But Tatiana only listens to the refusal, she is very unhappy. Onegin remains her ideal, who now will be still more solitary, in spite of it.

Act II.

Tatiana's name-day is being celebrated with a big hall. Onegin goes there on Lenski's invitation. The stupid company with their narrow views about him vex him so much that he seeks to revenge himself on Lenski for it, for which he begins courting Olga. Lenski takes the jest in earnest; it comes to a quarrel between the friends Lenski rushes out and sends Onegin a challenge. Social considerations force Onegin to accept the challenge; a dueling fanatic landlord, Saretsky stirs Lenski's anger so severely that a reconciliation is not possible.

This part in Pushkin's work is the keenest satire, an extraordinarily efficacious mockery of the whole subject of dueling. There is derision on Onegin's side, too, for he chooses as his second his coachman Gillot. But the duel was terribly in earnest; Lenski falls, shot through by his opponent's bullet. (This scene recalls a sad experience of the poet himself; for he himself fell in a duel by the bullet of a supercilious courtier, Georg Anth's-Heckeren, who died in Alsace in 1895).