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Scenarios of unrequited love are the stock-in-trade of opera composers, but with Eugene Onegin Tchaikovsky achieved something far beyond another varia-
tion on an all-too-familiar theme. For Deborah Warner, whose new production opens the Met season on September 23<2013>, the opera offers “a complete portrait of the human condition, viewed through the frame of the young approaching
life and love for the first time.”

Capturing that may sound like a tall order, but a sensitive presentation of Tchaikovsky’s richly lyrical masterpiece can rank among the most moving experiences an audience can have in the opera house. The Met’s new Onegin features the added benefit of a dream cast conducted by the remarkable Russian maestro Valery Gergiev. Anna Netrebko under- takes the role of the shy ingénue Tatiana, whose heart is broken after she confesses her love to the charming but uninterested Onegin. Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien, another Met favorite, takes on the title role, and tenor Piotr Beczala is the poet Lenski, Onegin’s ill-fated friend who hot-headedly challenges him to a duel over a meaningless flirtation. (Later in the season, a second cast will include Marina Poplavskaya, Peter Mattei, and Rolando Villazón in an eagerly anticipated return to the Met stage.)