Yahoo Lifestyle The Costumes in ‘Onegin’ at the Royal Ballet and Opera Are Fit for a Tsar
LONDON — In the summer of 1975, WWD reported that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis made a rare appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House after the death of her shipping tycoon husband, Aristotle Onassis. She was accompanied by her sister, Lee Radziwill. and was six minutes late to watch the Stuttgart Ballet company perform “Eugene Onegin.”
That same three-act ballet production, celebrating its 60th anniversary, is now on show until June 12 at the Royal Ballet and Opera in London. The tragic tale isn’t shy of drama or exquisite costumes — two things the Kennedy or Bouvier clan weren’t strangers to.
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The ballet was created by choreographer John Cranko and premiered on April 13, 1965, at Staatstheater Stuttgart in Germany with the storyline based on Alexander Pushkin’s classic “Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse” set in 1820s Russia.
Reece Clarke, the principal dancer at the Royal Ballet and Opera, played the role of the devilishly handsome Onegin on opening night on Wednesday evening to a full house with his counterpart Marianela Núñez, another principal at the ballet company, in the role of Tatiana, a bookish wallflower.
“I’ve started to notice that when I’m commuting to work or walking to the train station, I’m in an Onegin zone and it’s taken over my life. Maybe people think I’m this not-so-nice, arrogant guy walking around just because I’m getting into character sometimes,” Clarke said in an interview last week.
His character arrives in the Russian countryside from St. Petersburg with his friend, Lensky, for the upcoming birthday celebrations of Tatiana, whose sister Olga is engaged to.
Tatiana immediately falls in love with the elusive Onegin, who dismisses her. She writes him a heartfelt letter that backlashes on her during her birthday as Onegin tears the letter in her face and then flirts with Olga, which angers Lensky and in turn dares him to a duel.
The confident and haughty Onegin kills his friend in the duel and flees to travel the world to ruminate.
Years later, on his return to St. Petersburg, he attends a ball at the palace of Prince Gremin, where he recognizes his wife, Princess Tatiana, the once subdued country girl, who has now grown into a beautiful woman.
A regretful Onegin has a change of heart and realizes how blind in love he has been. He writes Tatiana an earnest letter and confesses his love for her, to which she refuses him and mirrors his actions by tearing up the letter in his face.
Unlike Clarke’s other roles, typically a prince dressed in pristine ivory threads and delicate embroidery in ballets such as “The Sleeping Beauty” or “Cinderella,” his costumes in “Onegin” are dark, seductive and unexpected for a repertoire on such a big stage.
His first appearance is in a black leather tailcoat jacket that’s trimmed with moss green suede and worn with matching boots and a silk lavallière held with an emerald brooch — a strong contrast to Tatina’s pale pink peasant-style dresses.
“When you put the costumes on, you just immediately get into character. It’s really something special,” Clarke said.
The costumes of “Onegin” have remained the same since the ballet’s premier. They were designed by Cranko’s close collaborator, Jürgen Rose, a renowned German costume designer who is now 87 years old and doesn’t give interviews.
Clarke’s costume in act one, scene two, where Tatiana dreams of Onegin, is his most understated and could easily be plucked out of a Saint Laurent collection with its sheer, striped blouse paired with a velvet waistcoat.
For the duel in act two, Onegin’s costume is dramatized with a black cape, a neat black double-breasted boucle jacket with another lavallière, this time in a deep purple print, with a vintage brooch that features a woman’s profile.
As the lead of “Onegin,” all of Clarke’s are custom made for him to measure up to his tall build of 6 feet, 2 inches.
His last look in act three shows a softer and mournful side to Onegin’s character with his regality still intact — a black tailcoat jacket with a velvet waistcoat that’s decorated with black sequins; a sliver of white on display by way of the shirt collar and ruffled cuff accessorized with a silk lavallière and a discreet silver brooch.
To bring the character down to earth, his leather boots have been swapped for black slippers, while Tatiana enters the act in an ankle-length ruby red gown that steals the limelight.
It’s rare that Clarke ever gets to keep his costumes. After each production is finished, the costumes get locked into the Royal Ballet and Opera’s archive and they’re sometimes used in rehearsals.
“I did enjoy squeezing into the [old] costumes of them when I could [when I was more junior]. I do love wearing the older costumes because sometimes your idols might have worn them and it also feels like a piece of history,” he said.
Last spring, Clarke had the opportunity to perform in a new dance commission that premiered at the Charleston Festival in Charleston Lewes, an hour’s commute from London, where he wore costumes designed by Dior Men’s artistic director Kim Jones and got to take them home with him.
When a principal dancer retires, their respective ballet company will gift them a few of their most memorable costumes.
Clarke, who is 29 years old, still has a few more decades to think about what he wants to take, but right now the costumes from “Onegin” and “Manon” are on top of his list.
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