Synopsis – Eugene Onegin

The opera is based on a verse-novel by the famous Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin - it is set on the Larin estate, outside St Petersburg, in the 1820s. Madame Larina is bringing up two impressionable teenage daughters: the impetuous Olga and her romantically-inclined elder sister Tatiana. Olga's fiancé, the poet Lensky, brings his cosmopolitan and prematurely world-weary friend Eugene Onegin to visit.

Tatiana falls in love with the handsome, aloof Onegin, and unwisely pours her heart out in a letter. Onegin patronisingly rejects her profession of love, and she is utterly crushed. At Tatiana's name-day party, Onegin flirts with Olga, provoking Lensky to challenge him to a duel – so strong is the honour code that the reluctant participants go ahead, and Onegin kills Lensky.

Years later, Onegin meets Tatiana at a ball, with her contented, older husband Gremin, a rich nobleman. Overcome with longing and remorse for past wrongs, Onegin writes to Tatiana. With the tables now turned, Tatiana receives Onegin and explains that, although she still loves him, she will not exchange duty and the bonds of marriage for reckless passion.