Opera North: Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin

Opera North are bringing Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin to the Leeds Grand Theatre this October. It's a new production, a heart-breaking tale of love and regret with a live orchestra and chorus. The story comes from Alexander Pushkin's 1833 verse novel, which provided most of the libretto, and Tchaikovsky himself billed it as 'lyric scenes' rather than an opera when it premiered in 1879.

This version is directed by Patrick Nolan, with costumes by Elizabeth Gadsby, and it's set in Russia across the years before and after Perestroika, inside Leslie Travers' Soviet gymnasium. It's sung in the original Russian with English surtitles. Tchaikovsky wrote ten operas alongside ballets like Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker; he once received a love letter from his former student Antonina Miliukova, whom he married and left a few months later, and channelled those emotions into the work. Pushkin himself sketched a self-portrait with the fictional Onegin in the margins of his 1824 manuscript. The production is a co-production with Irish National Opera and Opera Queensland.

On stage, John Brancy takes the title role of Eugene Onegin, with Caspar Singh as Lensky, Dean Robinson as Guillot and Simon Grange as Zaretsky. There are three performances: Thursday 22 October at 7:00pm, Saturday 24 October at 7:00pm and Thursday 29 October at 6:30pm. Each runs about 3 hours and 15 minutes, including two intervals.

Tickets start at £20 for those new to opera, £15 for Under 30s members, and are free for 16-20s, with £10 child tickets and group and school discounts available.