“Good-looking but nerdy woman meets a melancholy guy, the guy plays the diva, blood is shed, the good-looking nerd says, ‘Maybe later.’” That’s how rock critic Pat Blashill, a long-time writer for the popular music magazine “Rolling Stone” and an inquisitive newcomer to the world of “classical music,” recently summed up Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” for “Die Süddeutsche Zeitung.” The opera’s plot does in act unfold swiftly, but the psychological profiles Tchaikovsky creates for his characters are much more complex.

When Blashill characterizes Onegin, the spoiled playboy from St. Petersburg, as a “melancholy guy” and the inexperienced and provincial young woman Tatyana as a “nerd,”  he’s actually reversing what the composer intended. Tchaikovsky described his eponymous hero as an outright “smooth talker.” He had little sympathy for Onegin’s Byronic affectation, which leads him to coldly reject Tatyana’s love as well as to provoke his friend Lensky to engage in a fatal duel. And Tchaikovsky allows Onegin to come off as “melancholy” only at the end of the opera, when the dandy must admit the utter failure of his existence. Tchaikovsky had far more sympathy for the presumed “nerd” Tatyana, who is shy and yet gushes with feelings. His heroine matures beyond the romantic reveries of youth to become responsible and, in a moment of self-denial, in the end rejects Onegin herself out of respect for her husband. “I loved Tatyana and became outraged by Onegin,” Tchaikovsky admitted.

Just how deeply he identified with his operatic characters can be inferred not only from the passionate music he wrote but also from the life-changing decisions which the material inspired. While Tchaikovsky was working on “Eugene Onegin,” a 28-year-old music student named Antonina Miliukova confessed her love for him in a letter – in short, behaving in a way that was uncannily reminiscent of Tatyana. Tchaikovsky  did not want to cause the same kind of offense as Onegin, so he gave his admirer the courtesy of an answer – even if it was deliberately reserved. But Antonina would not let up, and finally Tchaikovsky ran the risk of entering a sham marriage – not least with the hope of being able to conceal his homosexuality.  A fateful decision: Just five days after the wedding he realized that he found Antonina to be “absolutely repulsive in the physical respect.” Two months later he became so desperate that he waded into the ice-cold Moscow River. But his suicide attempt failed, and Tchaikovsky suffered “only” a severe nervous breakdown, completely cutting himself off from Antonina for the rest of his life.

Anyone who would like to become acquainted with Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” or to hear this moving psychological drama once again should by no means miss the concert performance scheduled for LUCERNE FESTIVAL at Easter on 16 April, when Mariss Jansons will conduct the  Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.