Onegin
Launches Season in September 2008,
Featuring Lavish Designs by Elisabeth Dalton

From September 4-14, 2008, Houston Ballet launches its thirty-ninth season in grand style with John Cranko's dramatic evening-length masterwork Onegin, the preeminent story ballet of the late twentieth century, with sumptuous costumes and scenery by English designer Elisabeth Dalton not seen before in Houston.

Based on the great narrative poem Eugene Onegin, by the nineteenth century Russian writer Alexander Pushkin and Tchaikovsky's opera by the same name, the emotional ballet features an epic love story, deadly duels, and passionate revenge. The arrogant aristocrat Onegin rejects the love of the naïve young Tatiana only to realize later that he made a great mistake in throwing away his one chance at happiness. Cranko's absolute mastery of the art of the pas de deux is highlighted to great effect in this large-scale emotional masterpiece, climaxing in a final, heart-wrenching pas de deux between Tatiana and Onegin. Set to lush music by Tchaikovsky arranged by Kurt-Heinz Stolze with scenery and costumes evoking nineteenth century Russia, Onegin is an exquisite love story that will sweep audiences off their feet. One of the most famous "new" classics, Onegin was originally created for Cranko's own company, The Stuttgart Ballet. That company premiered it on April 13, 1965 in Stuttgart, Germany.

Since its premiere, the dazzling drama has been performed to great critical acclaim around the world and is in the repertoire of numerous companies including The Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, The Australian Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, and Hamburg Ballet. Anna Kisselgoff, of The New York Times said of the ballet's appeal, "To a public yearning for full-evening dramatic ballets, Onegin was so seductive that company after company throughout the world snapped up the work for their own repertory." (July 10, 1998). She later added, "Onegin is the embodiment of ballet as a new form of opera-house spectacle, a mix of prettiness and passion clearly and boldly telegraphed." (June 4, 2001)

The story of the Byronic world-weary Russian aristocrat Eugene Onegin has evolved from poetry to opera to ballet. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin composed his masterpiece poetic novel in 1837; fifty-two years later Tchaikovsky composed Eugene Onegin, an opera based on Pushkin's poem. Cranko was first exposed to the story while choreographing three dances for George Devine's production of the opera that the Sadler's Wells company premiered in 1952. In the years that followed, repeated screenings of a Russian film of the opera inspired him to create a ballet.

Born in South Africa in 1927, John Cranko was one of the most successful choreographers of full-length story ballets in the twentieth century. He joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet (later The Royal Ballet) in 1946 and in a few years began his choreographic career. In 1957, he created his first full-length ballet, The Prince of the Pagodas, for The Royal Ballet. He was appointed director of The Stuttgart Ballet in 1961, and in 1962, he premiered his breakthrough staging of Romeo and Juliet to great critical acclaim. His productions of Onegin (1965), The Taming of the Shrew (1969), and Carmen (1971) are now part of the international repertoire. Some other works he created in Stuttgart include Swan Lake (1963), Opus I (1965), and Initials R.B.M.E. (1972). In addition, he encouraged young dancers in his company - including Jiří Kylián and John Neumeier - to try their hand at choreography. The untimely death of John Cranko in 1973, at the age of 45, deprived the ballet world of one of its most talented choreographer of story ballets. Houston Ballet first performed Onegin was in 2005, and the company's repertoire includes one other work by John Cranko: The Lady and the Fool (1954), which Houston Ballet first performed in 1978.

British designer Elisabeth Dalton enjoyed an international reputation as a set and costume designer for opera houses and ballet companies. In 1969, she designed her first major sets and costumes for dance, for John Cranko's The Taming of the Shrew, mounted by The Stuttgart Ballet and one of the company's longest-lasting successes. She designed many of Cranko's earlier works, including The Lady and the Fool and Pineapple Poll. Most notable were her designs for his Romeo and Juliet in Frankfurt, and (in 1991) for his Onegin. Her designs for Onegin are now seen around the world. When Ms. Dalton's Onegin was staged in Helsinki, a reviewer wrote that she had brought the very soul of Pushkin's Russia to the stage.