Two things struck me on rehearing this recording in the context of the Met performance. One is the extent to which the conductor, Alexander Orlov, collaborates with his singers to linger over any bar marked with a fermata or ritardando, or to broaden out a phrase not so marked where the Romantic temperament would call for it, to an extent beyond that of the formerly “normal” Russian style. This applies above all to the performers we would classify as great singers, Ivan Kozlovsky as Lenski, whose self-consciously poetic nature, as set by the composer, certainly inclines in that direction, and Mark Reizen as Gremin—the two characters who are also given the most recognizably “operatic” solos. The concluding bars of their two main arias (Lenski’s “vesni moyei zlati – – – ye dni?”; Gremin’s “da, molodost, i shcha – – -astye,” a downward phrase expanding to the low G-flat) are the two most prominent of many examples, both dependent on the singer’s ability to magically fulfill them by finding coloristic variation within the stretched-out notes. The modern ear can hear these moments as a conductor indulging his singers in an “old-fashioned,” outmoded way of milking the effects. I hear it as singing characters living out their passionate lives, and conductor and singer being in agreement about the nature of each event.

Yet there are exceptions, and they relate to the second unusual thing about the performance, which is its persistently conversational tone, its refusal to resort to vocal dominance even when the singers are capable of it (and if you have doubts about that, listen to Reizen’s Ruslan, or Viking Guest in Sadko, or to Kozlovsky’s Rigoletto Duke excerpts or—surprise!—Lohengrin, however foreign his approach may strike you at first. Tchaikovsky clearly implied this reticence in his setting. None of the principal roles is extended in compass or tessitura, and none calls upon its interpreter to pull out the stops until Onegin and Tatiana do so in the climactic moments of the final scene. There is no vocalizing for its own sake, the extending of phrases on single vowels. The writing is wordnote-to-wordnote, the emphases created mostly by little variations in the strings of even note values—in other words, a poetic version of “everyday” communication, a majority of the text taken straight from Pushkin. This can disappoint us sometimes, accustomed as we are to a sung-out line. Lenski’s Act 1 arioso, “Ya lyublu vas, Olga,” sung as the principal couples alternately enter and exit, rather as in the Garden Scene in Faust, passes through without ever registering as a near-aria. A different impression is being sought. In the arias for Onegin and Gremin, which in are any case reverse reflections of each other in their attitudes toward love (specifically, love for Tatyana), there are phrases, almost identical except for a full-step baritone/bass difference in tessitura, whose impetus carries the voice into its upper range, and yet the speech emphasis and the even note values continue. Onegin’s phrases are given a più mosso to carry them through; Gremin’s proceed a tempo. Opera devotees are surely entitled to long for a sweep and at least a slight broadening of sustained line to fully satisfy in these phrases, but both singers (Andrei Ivanov is the Onegin) continue, very adeptly, on their word-oriented ways. And even when Reizen is given a full-voiced ritenuto on his potent E-flat, he keeps a restrained dignity in the utterance, with no trace of exhibition. That, I think, is just as Stanislavski  would have wished. He wanted the the aria to have an intimate, “extremely delicate character,” and to exude a “quiet dignity and gentle nobility.”