‘It is so painful to know that people pity me’: Tchaikovsky, unrequited love and me

Tormented by a sexuality he could never openly express, the composer poured his anguish into his opera Eugene Onegin. As a new production hits the stage, its director reveals why it speaks to his own impossible romance

Pyotr Tchaikovsky didn’t want his new piece to premiere at the opera house in Moscow. He thought staging it there, in the style of grand opera, would ruin it. He didn’t want the big sets, or the famous singers who sang too loudly and acted badly. So he insisted the premiere take place at the Moscow Conservatory, with a smaller budget, less prestige and students playing the leads. He even refused to call it an opera. Instead, he titled it “lyrical scenes”. Yet the work has become Tchaikovsky’s most celebrated musical drama – and a standard of the operatic repertory.

Eugene Onegin, based on Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse, is a story about unrequited love. It’s about love that is poorly timed or never spoken. It’s about the longing that eats at you from the inside and the devastation that haunts you years later. It’s about the roles we are meant to play in life that don’t fit us. It’s about not knowing yourself, not even knowing your own feelings. Lastly, it’s about making mistakes and living with the consequences.