I thought it was just a few years ago that I saw Eugene Onegin at the National Opera, but apparently almost 11 years have passed. The new Eugene Onegin directed by Marco Arturo Marelli that I saw yesterday was very satisfying. It all happen's in the protagonist's mind: It begins with Princess Gremina closing doors on him, and then he thinks he sees his friend Lenski sitting on a bench alive, but he turns out to be a dead body - the scene is repeated towards the end - and even when Onegin (Josef Wagner) is not on stage, he sits huddled on the edge by the sloping floor, underlining the fact that everything that happens is his memories and thoughts.

I liked the simple staging: on the left and right there are walls with high doors, in the background an outdoor scenery with a bench, and with a single wall outdoors becomes indoors. In the first act it is summer, in the second winter. Except for a few occasional pieces of furniture, that was all.

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From the point of view of my personal history  it felt very strange that from a distance Josef Wagner had a disticnt resemblance, even down to costumes, to my "Onegin." At times I was seeing distinctly double. Bizarre.