When Ralph Fiennes steps onto the stage of the Opéra national de Paris this winter, it will mark a significant first: the British actor and filmmaker is making his debut as an opera director. The production — Eugene Onegin by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — opens at the Palais Garnier on 26 January 2026 and runs through 27 February, with all performances already sold out.
The Paris staging brings together three converging stories: Fiennes’s transition into opera direction, the first Paris Opera project led by Semyon Bychkov since his appointment as the company’s next music director, and a work that has long occupied a central place in both artists’ creative lives.
A first opera, shaped from the inside
Fiennes is no stranger to Eugene Onegin. In 1999, he portrayed the title character in a film adaptation directed by his sister, Martha Fiennes. More than two decades later, he returns to Pushkin’s world from a different vantage point, now focusing on the architecture of the drama rather than inhabiting it from within.
In an interview released by the Paris Opera, Fiennes describes Eugene Onegin as “a love story that doesn’t work,” a formulation that frames his reading of the opera less as a tale of missed romance than as a study of emotional closure and delayed awakening. He is particularly drawn to Onegin’s psychological instability: a character who rejects intimacy early in life, kills his closest friend in a duel, and only later discovers a capacity for love that arrives too late to be fulfilled.
That inner transformation informs Fiennes’s staging choices. Rather than elaborate naturalism, the production favours pictorial restraint: simple, suggestive spaces that evoke the Russian countryside or aristocratic interiors while leaving room for the characters’ emotional lives to unfold. Nature, he notes, is never absent — even indoors, the presence of forests and open landscapes lingers as a psychological backdrop.
Working with set designer Michael Levine, Fiennes has aimed for visual clarity that helps the audience understand where they are, while keeping the focus firmly on what the characters are feeling. For him, opera’s power lies in its ability to open emotional “rooms” we may not even know we have — moments when music and drama combine to suspend speech and leave the listener changed.
Bychkov’s first Paris Opera project in a new role
On the podium for most performances is Semyon Bychkov, conducting Eugene Onegin as his first project since being named the Paris Opera’s next music director. Officially, he becomes music director designate in August 2026 and takes up the post fully in 2028, but this production already offers a glimpse of his artistic priorities.
Bychkov has a lifelong relationship with Eugene Onegin: it was the first opera he ever conducted, as a student in Leningrad, and he has returned to it repeatedly throughout his career. In an interview with The New York Times, he described the opera as almost an obsession in his early years, shaped by his immersion in Pushkin’s language and Tchaikovsky’s ability to uncover meaning through musical nuance.
Speaking to the newspaper, Bychkov emphasised the importance of cultural identity at the Paris Opera, calling every orchestra “a child of its country” and underlining the need to preserve the distinctive character of French musical life in an increasingly homogenised world. He also pointed to a “historic opportunity” ahead, as upcoming renovations at both the Palais Garnier and the Opéra Bastille may allow the orchestra to expand its symphonic repertoire alongside opera.
The collaboration with Fiennes has deep roots. Bychkov was the one who proposed Eugene Onegin — and Fiennes as its director — to Paris Opera director Alexander Neef after conducting Elektra in 2022. Rehearsals, singers have noted, began unusually early and with close joint involvement from conductor and director, allowing musical timing and dramatic rhythm to develop in parallel.
A classic reframed, without updating it
At the centre remains Eugene Onegin itself: Tchaikovsky’s 1879 opera after Alexander Pushkin, a work that resists melodrama in favour of psychological detail. Tatiana’s letter scene, Lensky’s fatal duel, and Onegin’s final awakening are not treated here as grand operatic set pieces, but as stages in a moral and emotional disintegration.
Fiennes has described Onegin as a strikingly modern figure — not because the work needs updating, but because its emotional logic still resonates. The opera’s darkness, in his view, lies less in overt tragedy than in the quiet consequences of choices made too early and understood too late.
That approach aligns closely with Bychkov’s musical reading: a score that avoids easy lyricism, favouring shadowed orchestral colours and a dramatic pacing that mirrors the characters’ inner imbalance.
A cast anchored in the Russian repertoire
The production brings together a cast closely associated with the Russian and Eastern European repertoire. The title role of Onegin is sung by Boris Pinkhasovich, while Ruzan Mantashyan takes on Tatiana, whose letter scene stands at the emotional centre of the opera. Lensky is performed by Bogdan Volkov, with Marvic Monreal as Olga.
The supporting cast includes Alexander Tsymbalyuk as Prince Gremin, Susan Graham as Madame Larina, and Elena Zaremba as Filipyevna. They are joined by Peter Bronder (Triquet), Amin Ahangaran (Zaretsky), and Mikhail Silantev (the Captain), alongside the Chorus and Orchestra of the Paris Opera.
Beyond the stage
The Paris Opera will record the production in early February 2026, with a live broadcast scheduled on France.tv on 9 February. The performance will later be shown in cinemas and streamed on Paris Opera Play, while a radio broadcast on France Musique is planned for March.
For now, however, the sold-out run at the Palais Garnier already signals the level of anticipation surrounding this encounter between film, opera, and institutional renewal. As Fiennes takes his first steps as an opera director and Bychkov begins a new chapter in Paris, Eugene Onegin becomes more than a repertory staple: it is a meeting point between personal histories and the future direction of one of Europe’s most closely watched opera houses.
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