Royal Ballet's Onegin review: Impassioned choreography and quiet devastation

Why do we care about Eugene Onegin? Pushkin, serialising his verse-novel in the 1820s, called his creation ‘a dangerous and sad pariah’, Tchaikovsky ‘a cold dandy’.

Even when writing his 1879 opera, the composer appeared unwilling to give his protagonist the benefit of the doubt: ‘I loved Tatiana, and was furiously indignant with Onegin, who seemed to me a… heartless fop.’ By turns cynical, self-absorbed, often cruel, Onegin – even among the artists he inspired – is, it seems, a hard man to love.

Yet John Cranko’s three-act ballet, created in 1965, leaves some wiggle room for our sympathy. It’s a work that divides opinion: for the liberties it takes with Pushkin’s plot, for its score, pulled together from lesser-known Tchaikovsky and, especially, for the dry corps ‘filler’ dances. What it does offer – and why its four main roles are lusted after by dancers the world over – is impassioned choreography which, though uneven, lends itself to an unusual level of interpretive freedom. It’s also the kind of dance-drama that the Royal Ballet – raised on a diet of Ashton and MacMillan – excels at. Even so, the opening night of the company’s latest revival proved something special.

Pre-publicity photos of Reece Clarke as Onegin already had balletomanes swooning: the 24-year-old is pretty much a Byronic Mr Darcy made flesh. No acting was required here: it’s clear to see why Tatiana would have her head turned. But remarkably for someone tackling the role for the first time – Clarke was promoted to First Soloist just over a week ago – he displayed no hint of nerves, and his reading is already one of nuance, an Onegin who tugs at the heart strings even as his superciliousness repels us.

Walking with Tatiana in the Larina family garden, he is quietly amused, rather than contemptuous, of her puppyish devotion; later he rips up her love letter, not in anger, but frustration after she refuses to take it back from him. His flirtation with Olga (Francesca Hayward on fine, playful form) is, for him, just a way to pass some time; his cold hauteur at being challenged to a dual by Lensky, Olga’s fiancé (wonderfully observed by Matthew Ball) is painful to watch. His friend’s death at his hands leaves him bowed and broken.

And what to say of Natalia Osipova? Many dancers talk of the joy of ‘letting go’ on stage – but nobody does abandoned quite like the 33-year-old Russian. She is, quite simply, one of great Tatianas, wide-eyed and infatuated in the early acts, feverish in that final, unforgettable pas de deux. When the now married Tatiana rejects Onegin, tearing his own love letter to shreds and dumping the pieces into his hands, there’s no sense of triumph or feeling of one-upmanship – just quiet devastation at what might have been.

Until 29 February, Royal Opera House (020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk)