Consider attending one of Berkeley Opera's remaining "Eugene Onegin"
performances this weekend, May 2-4. The attractions: two fine sopranos
singing Tatiana in the alternating casts - Jillian Khuner and Lanier
McNab - some amazing "production values" of talent and thrift, and,
especially, to be able to say that you were there when Mark Streshinsky
made his West Coast professional debut as director.

Remember the name. The young San Francisco Opera stage manager and
assistant director is impressive, frustrating, his work is anything
but routine.

Staging the "Onegin" on what must have been a shoestring budget or less,
he got everybody's attention and only partially by being provocative.
Most of his work showed an innate dramatic ability.

Still in his early thirties, Streshinsky spent half of his life in opera
- SFO, Dallas, NYCO, St. Louis. He has directed "Faust" for the Sarasota
Opera and Massenet's "Cleopatre" in Tully Hall, among others. His wife
is the soprano Marie Plette, a 1992 SFO Merola Program graduate. He
dedicated the "Onegin" production to his father, the famed photographer
Ted Streshinsky, who died last month, even as "Onegin" rehearsals began
at the Julia Morgan Theater.

It is with a photographer's (or a painter's) eye that the director
perceives the action, and with an artist's sensibility that he handles
so well the mostly amateur actors on a tiny stage, which is without basic
facilities.

Working with production manager Katherine Covell and Jon Retsky's magical
lightning (HOW did he do it?!), Streshinsky transformed six ladders on
either side of a cleverly lit large white sheet into a credible cherry
orchard. Twelve empty chairs created a fascinating ballroom scene. A
simple wooden block in the middle of the stage served as the base of the
opening picture in each scene, Streshinsky posing his principals there
to set the mood and interpret feelings and situations, illuminating the
text.

So many aspects of the production felt "right" that it was all the more
jarring to witness Streshinsky's liberties with Onegin's character.

It may well be debated whether Onegin just missed the boat with Tatiana
or at the time the first act takes place, he was simply too immature or
stupid to recognize the gift she had offered him. But ambiguity and
psychological complexity are not good enough for the director.

Streshinsky is brilliant in staging the unique Letter Scene, with Onegin
ghostly presence as Tatiana is speaking to him in her mind - we see him
near her, almost touching her, as she might be imagining him.

But then, it's the real Onegin who sits on that center-stage block,
reading the letter and bursting out in laughter, which goes on and on,
ending the scene with that convulsive, mocking sound.

And then, things get even worse: on the way to Tatiana's house, Onegin
prances by a group of girls and, in pantomime, shows it the letter to
them, lets them read it and join him in laughter over the naive girl's
touching honesty about falling in love for the first time.

Streshinsky's Onegin exhibits more oafish, brutal behavior yet later,
including way too much physicality, crowding Tatiana and - could it be?
- pinching her bottom. Pushkin must be revolving in his grave, and the
audience has to settle for a caricature, not a character to care about.
Genius as he was, the poet spent eight long years writing "Onegin"; it
is not text to disregard.

If you read Pushkin (and it must be been required reading in Streshinsky's
Russian family), it's obvious that Onegin is not an especially kind
character (the poem opens with his reference to the "half-dead codger"
of an uncle, who finally left Onegin the estate), and he is terribly
patronizing in response to Tatiana's confession of love.

And yet, there it is, in black and white, when he read the letter: far
from mocking and exposing Tatiana, Pushkin's Onegin is "touched to his
heart's core: / The language of innocent, girlish dreams / Stirred up a
swarm of thoughts within him, / And he remembered Tatiana's charms, /
Her pale color and look of melancholy, / And in delightful, harmless
folly / He plunged head first and filled his soul..."

What's the big deal? If a young, talented director gives in to the
temptation to make a greater impact on the audience (which dutifully
gasped at the right places), even if it means going counter to the truth
of a work, there lies disaster, instead of solid accomplishment.

Peter Sellars started with raw talent and it took him years beyond
Streshinsky's age to give in to knee-jerk sensationalism, to betray works
entrusted to him. In the case of Harry Kupfer, it took decades for
brilliance to molder into abuse of text and of the singers.

Finding Streshinsky is a schizophrenic experience of recognizing imagination
and talent while seeing the possibility, at a young age, of the descent
into self-importance and the ultimate artistic arrogance of not honoring
a work, using it only as an excuse for showing off. The hope is that
he'll stay on the straight-and-narrow, graduating to great, honest
productions.

Also, whatever the financial considerations might have been, an opera
director who cares about the music would never settle for the amateurish,
unsingable David Lloyd Jones translation, certainly not in a town with
two of the finest translators anywhere: Donald Pippin and David Scott
Marley.

Go and see the cause of all this hue and cry. Information is at
http://www.berkeleyopera.org. And then, after braving a simply unacceptable
orchestral performance (guess nobody from the Berkeley Symphony was
available last weekend), go home and throw a CD on the barbie to listen
to Yuri Temirkanov's "Onegin," the definitive musical interpretation,
and all will be well again.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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