She Should Have Called re:Write

Words aren’t generally the first things that come to mind when thinking about the opera, but writing figures prominently in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. In Act I, the bookworm heroine, Tatiana, meets Onegin, falls instantly and madly in love, and decides to express her new feelings on paper.

In the new production of Eugene Onegin currently on stage at the Metropolitan Opera, Tatiana, sung by Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, fitfully starts her letter over and over, crumpling her rejected drafts and flinging them around the stage as she goes. She finally writes something she can presumably live with and sends it off to her crush… who promptly returns it, rejecting Tatiana’s advances and berating her for being so naïve.  It’s all downhill from there. Duels, death, unhappiness, unrequited love, and the usual cursing of fate all follow.

Now, we’re not saying had Tatiana written a better letter that everyone would have lived happily ever after.  But it couldn’t have hurt.