Page 449 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

Eugene Onegin at Opera Holland Park plucks the heartstrings

What Tatyana sees in Onegin is hard to say. Samuel Dale Johnson offers breathtaking arrogance

and a patronising manner, characterfully sung, exactly as the role demands. “It’s not you, it’s

me,” is essentially his message, a classic brush-off that here turns out to be true. Yet it’s Lensky,

in love with Emma Stannard’s sweet Olga, who pays the fatal price of male bravado. Thomas

Atkins shows star quality as the poet, offering bittersweet beauty in his lament for the golden

days of his youth. To June 25
Rebecca Franks

Read the full Eugene Onegin review

Lise Davidsen and Freddie De Tommaso danced a waltz for a duet from The Merry Widow, accompanied by James Baillieu
MARK ALLAN

Lise Davidsen and Freddie de Tommaso: a stellar operatic pair

Having banged out their credentials in their opening salvos — she, her trademark curtain

raiser Dich, teure Halle from Tannhäuser; he, Verdi’s muscular romanza from I Lombardi, La
mia letizia — the pair matched up in the love duet from Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. This was