HONOLULU - It's a fine, youthful "Onegin" being readied for a Jan. 31
opener in the Blaisdell Concert Hall. Apparently, Hawaii Opera Theater
director Henry Akina is not trusting anybody - or very few - over 30.
Two of the singers portraying older characters - Prince Gremin and Triquet
- are so ridiculously young that they require Hollywood-strength makeup
to make them look believable. Still, Philip Cokorinos and James Price,
respectively, sound splendidly authentic and authentically splendid.

By the time this production opens here, I'll be back home, for the
beginning of the San Francisco Ballet season, but I enjoyed the rehearsals
leading up to the dress - wish I could have stayed long enough at least
for that.  Still, even with a great deal of marking at the rehearsals,
the young voices came through, some of them thrillingly.

Matthew Kirchner, the Lenski, is a tenor at the beginning of a promising
career: young, trim, handsome, with a good voice, and a great ear for the
music, he also brings convincing, believable, real passion to the role, even
when there is no audience present. The other principal singers are all
talented, youthful artists as well: Aimee Willis is the Tatiana, Elena
Bocharova sings Olga, David Templeton appears in the title role.

The small but important roles of Tatiana's mother and nurse are well
portrayed by Judith Christin and Dorothy Byme, respectively. They too need
to put on extra years to do the job properly. Bocharova, a three-time Adler
Fellow, is the only Russian in the cast; coaching by Vera Danchenko-Stern
has done miracles to bridge the distance between young Americans and the St.
Petersburg of old. (She has worked with the greatest "Onegin" conductor of
them all, Yuri Temirkanov, and it shows.)

Dejan Miladinovic is the stage director and Atlanta's William Fred Scott
conducts. I am happy to report that at a piano rehearsal, the conductor
hummed the part of several instrumental groups with great abandon, rounding
out Beebe Freitas' one-woman (piano) band. Scott is at least as loud as
Toscanini and Solti at their most committed... and with a better voice!
HOT is not a big company (and yet an important one here, in the middle of
the Pacific, see http://home.earthlink.net/~janos451/hot1223.htm), its
entire budget cannot match the SF Opera's deficit for a single season, but
Peter Dean Beck's scenic design looks positively opulent. Behind a
spectacular scrim projection of a birch forest, three revolving round
platforms - fringed with "real" trees - provide a practical, fluent set,
while maintaining a Russian atmosphere.

It would be, of course, just plain *wrong* to be critical of anything seen
at rehearsals, so I am just asking innocent questions here: why would a
naturally blonde Tatiana (sister to a blonde Olga) be saddled with a
bobcat-sized (and shaped) black wig, and would young Onegin appear in the
country dressed in black? (The other costumes, by Helen Rodgers, are fine
and authentic.)

Anyway, if you're here, either for the Pro Bowl or for other reasons - and
especially, if you're lucky enough to live here - be sure to catch an
"Onegin" or two between Jan.31 and Feb. 4.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
[log in to unmask]