The finest of all narrative ballets? Stuttgart Ballet in John Cranko’s Onegin

Opera House, Stuttgart
July 21, 2023

John Cranko made many fine ballets, many fine story ballets, but when it comes to narrative, his crowning glory must surely be Onegin. Based on Pushkin’s verse-novel, it is full of expressive emotions from start to finish. A dance of young love, passion, rejection and regret, whose performers move from young to middle-age, it requires consummate actors as well as superb dancers. Stuttgart Ballet delivered. Absolutely.

Martí Fernández Paixà is a superb Onegin, perhaps ballet’s ultimate romantic villain. He is not tall, which means that physical presence alone cannot cut it. What he does come with, is bags of everything else. He fills the stage, even when just standing in the background at a party doing nothing except simply being there. He also has the requisite disdainful manner. Conceit and smugness are writ large. The little things count for a lot. The look and especially the raised eyebrow at the dancing of the soldiers and girls in the garden spoke volumes. More than any step ever could.

You can see why Tatiana is attracted to him. He’s good looking and mysterious. But he’s also flawed. Paixà hints quite early that there’s aggression not that deeply buried, which soon bursts forth at her Act II birthday party.

It may be called Onegin but it’s Tatiana Cranko focuses the action on. It is she who opens and closes the ballet. Rocio Aleman gave a lovely portrait of a serious woman in whom passion was unexpectedly awakened. When Onegin dances with her in the garden, we saw she didn’t quite understand the feelings that were brewing. But then, in her bedroom, a smile appears as she opens up and her excitement bursts forth like a dam breaking. But perhaps the best comes at the end. In the final scene, Aleman really made you believe that she was terribly conflicted and struggling with her emotions. When she banished him forever, it seemed her whole life crumbled around her in that moment.

The pas de deux were wonderful. Paixà is caring and considerate, his lifts are strong and effortless. The highlight, as always, was the ‘Mirror’ scene in which the couple very much have equal billing, equality of steps, a stark contrast to the earlier ‘real’ pas de deux in Madame Larina’s garden that is very much all about him.

What is really clever here, is that the choreography is, in effect, a translation of much of Tatiana’s letter to Onegin. In Pushkin’s poem, it declares: “You came in dreams: I feared to waken, I loved your image even then. I trembled at your glance, and when you spoke, my very soul was shaken… Just now, did I not see you flitting, Through the dim room where I am sitting, To stand, dear vision, by my bed?” Cranko indeed shows us Onegin as she sees him, dreams of him, not as he really is.

What we don’t get is any sense of Tatiana’s doubts, however. In the poem she goes on to muse, “Are you a guardian angel to me? Or but a tempter to undo me?” soon after wondering, “Perhaps this is a mad delusion…” and whether it was all folly and, “Fate plans a different conclusion.”

Gabriel Figueredo only graduated from the John Cranko School in 2019. It was no surprise when he went straight into the company, nor that he was promoted to demi-soloist just two years later. Promise is being fulfilled. Fast. He is a naturally youthful Lensky, and at the beginning, one of the happiest I’ve ever seen. His dancing is fine, all gorgeous ports de bras and dreamy fine lines in arabesque. His partnering isn’t quite at the top yet but is coming along in leaps and bounds too. And he can act. His uncontrolled jealousy and rage when Onegin steals Tatiana’s younger sister, Olga, away at the ball was palpable.

Who would be a younger sister? Olga is a bit of a thankless role. It’s easy to overdo the girly flirtatiousness but Veronika Verterich got it spot on, being naturally bright and cheery, light and airy.

Clemens Fröhlich cut a fine, handsome, dignified Prince Gremin. His pas de deux with Aleman’s Tatiana was the epitome of good manners and restraint. But while supportive of his wife, there was also a sense that he’s just a little distanced from her. That’s important, because it makes her final rejection of Onegin all the more potent and seared into mind as you leave.