¹ ‘C'est assurément un des opéras les plus “avancés” qui aient été écrits’. Le Petit Parisien, 9 March 1895.

² Frey, Emily, ‘Nowhere Man: Evgeny Onegin and the Politics of Reflection in Nineteenth-Century Russia’, 19th-Century Music 36/3 (2013): 209–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boris Gasparov, Five Operas and a Symphony: Word and Music in Russian Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005): 58–94; and Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997): 52–60. Contrary to what I have found in the Nice example, Julie Buckler argues that ‘Western scholars’, in contrast to Soviet ones who she states were first to inscribe Onegin into a realist literary aesthetic, ‘have tended to see Tchaikovskii's opera as anything but realist’. See her The Literary Lorgnette: Attending Opera in Imperial Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000): 117.

³ Quoted from Cui's La Musique en Russie in Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 49. Cui's text was first published as a series of articles in La Revue et Gazette musicale from 1878–80, and then in full by Fischbacher in Paris in 1880. Marina Frolova-Walker has equally argued that this publication strongly shaped foreign impressions of Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers in the late nineteenth century. See her Russian Music and Nationalism: From Glinka to Stalin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007): 45–6. While Cui's ideas certainly appear to have become more common currency in the early twentieth century, Tchaikovsky was often deemed an authentically Russian composer in the decades prior to Diaghilev's saisons russes: a time when his and Glinka's music far outweighed that of the Kuchka in concert halls and opera houses abroad.

⁴ My association of realism with cosmopolitanism stems in part from Tanya Agathocleous's Urban Realism and the Cosmopolitan Imagination in the Nineteenth Century: Visible City, Invisible World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), though her monograph is more concerned with the nineteenth-century city as a place in which to reflect upon global community, and from Richard Bonfiglio's ‘Cosmopolitan Realism: Portable Domesticity in Brontë's Belgian Novels’ Victorian Literature and Culture 40/ 2 (2012): 599–616, which explores the cosmopolitan mobility of domestic settings in realist fiction.

⁵ Cristina Magaldi, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Music in the Nineteenth Century’, Oxford Handbooks Online, www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935321.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935321-e-62 (accessed 12 March 2017).

⁶ Gagnier, Regenia, ‘Good Europeans and Neo-Liberal Cosmopolitans: Ethics and Politics in Late Victorian Contemporary Cosmopolitanism’, Victorian Literature and Culture 38 (2010): 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ For more on what they call ‘new cosmopolitanism’, as an ‘ethical-political stance’, see Collins, Sarah and Gooley, Dana, ‘Music and the New Cosmopolitanism: Problems and Possibilities’, The Musical Quarterly 99/2 (2017): 142–9Google Scholar.

⁸ Amanda Anderson, Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

⁹ See Alexander, Tamsin, ‘Decentralising via Russia: Glinka's A Life for the Tsar in Nice, 1890’, Cambridge Opera Journal 27/1 (2015): 35–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Other libretto translations by Delines from Russian into French would include Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko (Leipzig: M. P. Belyayev, 1896) and Musorgsky's Boris Godunov (Paris: W. Bessel, 1908). As for literature, by 1895 his translations counted Tolstoy's Childhood and Adolescence (Paris: J. Hetzel, 1886) and a collection of essays and short stories by Turgenev (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1892). His early writings promoting the alliance included La France jugée par la Russie (Paris: Librairie Illustrée, 1887) and Nos amis les Russes (Paris: L. Boulanger, 1887).

¹¹ Two letters between Delines and Tchaikovsky have survived (one from Tchaikovsky to Delines and vice versa). During a concert tour in Paris in 1891, Tchaikovsky wrote to Modest saying that he hoped to spend time with Delines along with other ‘Russian Parisians’, Sofie Menter, Vasily Sapelnikov and Yuly Konyus. See Fédorov, Vladimir, ‘Čajkovskij et la France (A propos de quelques lettres de Čajkovskij à Félix Mackar)’, Revue de musicologie 54/1 (1968): 29Google Scholar.

¹² See Fédorov, ‘Čajkovskij et la France’, 66.

¹³ On the collaboration, Mackar wrote to Tchaikovsky from Paris on 19 April 1888: ‘Messrs. Détroyat and Gallet … have asked me to send you an outline libretto entitled La Géorgienne …. This libretto might be suitable for the opening of the season at the Opéra-Comique or the future Théâtre Lyrique’, trans. Luis Sundkvist, http://wiki.tchaikovsky-research.net/wiki/Letter_3557 (accessed 8 November 2013). Although a libretto for an opera entitled La Courtisane, after Goethe's Der Gott und die Bajadere, was drawn up, Tchaikovsky never started the score. Two letters from Mackar to Tchaikovsky about staging Onegin in Paris, dated 25 May and 27 October 1888, can be found in Chaykovsky i zarubezhnїye muzїkantї, ed. Nikolay Alekseyev (Leningrad, 1970): 159–60, cited in ‘Michel Delines’, http://wiki.tchaikovsky-research.net/wiki/Michel_Delines#ref4 (accessed 8 November 2013).

¹⁴ Mackar was probably spurred to action in frustration at the losses he made from purchasing Tchaikovsky's operas from Jurgenson; on 2 November 1886 (N.S.), Tchaikovsky wrote to him: ‘I am awfully sorry for the monetary losses that my operas are bringing you’ (quoted in Fédorov, ‘Čajkovskij et la France’, 57).

¹⁵ ‘C'est la France que revient l'honneur d'avoir découvert en premier la musique russe. … En 1840, tandis que le public russe habitué aux Lucia et aux Norma faisait un accueil plus que froid aux œuvres de Glinka, qu'il traitait de “musique de moujik”, Berlioz se déclarait l'admirateur passionnée de la Vie pour le Tsar, et proclamait Glinka un des premiers compositeurs du siècle. Prosper Mérimée de son côté, ce fin connaisseur en matière d'art, disait que cet opéra ouvrait une nouvelle ère dans l'histoire de la musique’. Michel Delines, ‘Les Compositeurs russes: Pierre Tchaїkovski’, Revue d'art dramatique, January–March 1888. Delines was mistaken in attributing this quote to Prosper Mérimée. It was in fact his cousin, Henri Mérimée, who had declared that A Life ‘opened up a new era in the history of music’ in his Une année en Russie, lettres à M. Saint-Marc Girardin (Paris: Amyot, 1847): 91–2.

¹⁶ Debora Silverman, for instance, has explored how the alliance was celebrated through a rococo revival invoking the two countries’ ‘common cultural history of the mid-eighteenth century, when the first Franco-Russian alliance had occurred’. See her Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology and Style (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989): 159–71.

¹⁷ ‘Cet opéra serait-il goûte en France? Tout ce que nous pouvons dire, c'est qu'il jouit d'une faveur exceptionnelle dans la colonie française de Saint-Pétersbourg’. Delines, ‘Pierre Tchaїkovski’.

¹⁸ ‘Puisque Paris a seul le pouvoir de sacrer les grandes productions de l'art, il faut espérer qu'il ne refusera pas aux compositeurs russes les lauriers dont il se montre encore si généreux à l’égard des œuvres vieillies d'une nation, qui n'a même plus le mérite d’être une amie de la France!’ Delines, ‘Pierre Tchaїkovski.’

¹⁹ Telegram from Ziloti to Modest (4 November 1892) quoted in Fédorov, ‘Čajkovskij et la France’, 44–5. Ziloti had toured with Tchaikovsky.

²⁰ To mark the new political balance, the first half was made up of extracts from French operas and ballets. The Russian anthem was sung by over 40 soloists and the Opéra chorus. See, for instance, a report in Le Ménestrel, 8 October 1893, 327.

²¹ Telegram from Ziloti to Modest Tchaikovsky (1 November 1893) quoted in Fédorov, ‘Čajkovskij et la France’, 45. The memoirs of Czech composer Bohuslav Foerster further corroborate that Gailhard was considering staging Onegin. Foerster recalls Tchaikovsky talking in September 1893 ‘about his plans for a trip to Paris, where the Opéra was preparing to stage Yevgeny Onegin’ (quoted in Peter Feddersen, Tschaikowsky in Hamburg: Eine Dokumentation, volume 8, Čajkovskij-Studien (London: Schott, 2006): 147–8).

²² In the early to mid-1890s, music by Russian composers appeared more frequently in French concert programmes than ever before, Russian stories and allegories for the alliance became the subject of numerous stage spectacles, and swathes of pro-alliance music for domestic use were written using popular Russian tunes. These musical events and publications have been explored by Helena Tyrväinen, as in her paper, ‘The Republican Nation Embraces Alterity: The Press of Third Republic France at the service of Franco-Russian Friendship and Music, October 1893’, for the conference, ‘Russia and the Musical World: Nineteenth-Century Networks of Exchange’, Goldsmiths, University of London, 16 December 2016, and her ‘Helsinki – Saint Petersburg – Paris: The Franco-Russian Alliance and Finnish French Musical Relations’, Finnish Music Quarterly, 1 (2003): 51–9.

²³ The first announcement I have found was printed in L'Attaque on 16 June 1894.

²⁴ One notice in Le XIX^e siècle reported that Onegin would be performed in memory of the late composer: ‘In Nice, we know that the Opéra will honour the memory of Tchaikovsky this year by giving a performance of his best lyric drama, Onegin’ (À Nice, on sait que l'Opéra honerera cette année la mémoire de Tschaїkowsky en faisant représenter son meilleur drame lyrique, Onéguine) (Le XIX^e siècle, 10 November 1894). Meanwhile, Delines himself told the story as follows: ‘here in Nice, considering the size of the Russian colony, who will, no doubt, support their favourite opera by their native composer, I began to apply to the mayor and the theatrical commission about producing Onegin in the coming season, and was pleased that this [request] was soon taken into account. I even think that, in the future, the Russian colony would be entitled to, and should, ask the opera management for a small amount of Russian repertoire, since they do the same to please the Italians’ (‘no zdes’ v Nitstse, imeya v vidu chislennost’ russkoy kolonii, kotoraya bez somneniya ne otkazhetsya podderzhat’ lyubimuyu operu rodnogo kompozitora, ya nachal khodataystvovat’ u g. mera i v teatral'noy kommissii o postanovke v nastoyashchem sezone “Onegina”, i moy dovodї bїli vskore prinyatї vo vnimaniye. Ya polagayu dazhe, chto i vpred’ russkaya koloniya v Nitstse, podobno drugim inostrannїm koloniyam, imeyet polnoye pravo i dolzhna trebovat’ ot direktsii Operї khotya nebol'shogo russkago repertuara; ved’ stavyat zhe v ugodu italiantsam yezhegodno operї ikh kompozitorov), Le Messager franco-russe, 17 March 1895.

²⁵ The support of the local papers was key in stoking interest: Delines enlisted Le Petit Niçois and L'Eclaireur to the cause, as shown by a letter to the editor of Le Messager Franco-Russe on 23 December 1894 in which he thanked Leon Garibaldi of L'Eclaireur, and Victor Garcien and Philippe Casimir of Le Petit Niçois ‘for the readiness with which they helped draw [Olive] Lafon's attention to Onegin’. Lafon was then director of the theatre.

²⁶ His first article for the paper, an obituary of Tchaikovsky, was published in the 5 December 1893 issue. Le Messager Franco-Russe ran until 1914.

²⁷ Data collected from notices in the Nice daily paper Le Petit Niçois.

²⁸ Une Fête russe was first performed at the Opéra in Paris on 24 October 1893 on the last day of a series of celebrations held for the Russian fleet's diplomatic visit to the city.

²⁹ See Alexander, ‘Glinka's A Life for the Tsar in Nice’, 35–62.

³⁰ While it is unclear whether Mackar or Delines chose this genre title, it may well have been Delines, since he had described Onegin as a drame lyrique in his 1888 article for La Revue d'art dramatique.

³¹ See M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet, ‘Drame lyrique’, Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 3 November 2013).

³² Although the term verismo was not used in the earliest reviews of these two operas, it was common parlance by 1895. See Schwartz, Arman, ‘Rough Music: Tosca and Verismo Reconsidered’, 19th-Century Music 31/3 (2008): 231CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Though notoriously difficult to define in music terms, Verismo has often been used as a synonym for ‘realist opera’. Andreas Giger has posited that the term verismo can be applied to any opera of the late nineteenth century showing a reaction against idealism, though he maintains the 1890s were a crucial turning point towards realism. See his ‘Verismo: Origin, Corruption, and Redemption of an Operatic Term’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 60/2 (2007): 271–315.

³³ See notices for Cavalleria, for example, in L'Univers Illustré, 30 January 1892, and for Pagliacci in Le Matin, 15 September 1894.

³⁴ See George Becker, ‘Introduction’, in Documents of Modern Literary Realism, ed. George Becker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016): 4.

³⁵ Heinrich and Julius Hart, ‘For and Against Zola’, in Documents of Modern Literary Realism, 260.

³⁶ Due to the limited areas of experience depicted in nineteenth-century realist works, in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality and location, there have been numerous challenges to the idea that realism truly represented universal emotions. See, for example, Donna M. Campbell, ‘American Realism and Gender’, in The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism, ed. Keith Newlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019): 41–64.

³⁷ On the speed at which Ibsen was being translated at this time, see Tore Rem, ‘Ibsen and Shakespeare: Insularity and Internationalism in Early British Ibsen Reception’, in Internationalism and the Arts in Britain and Europe at the Fin de Siècle, ed. Grace Brockington (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009): 209. And for a list of Cavalleria rusticana's early international outings, see Alfred Loewenberg Annals of Opera, 1597–1940 (London: Calder, 1978): 592–3.

³⁸ As discussed in Barry, Catherine A., ‘“La Revue des Deux Mondes” in Transition: From the Death of Naturalism to the Early Debate on Literary Cosmopolitanism’, The Modern Language Review 68/3 (1973): 549CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ See Rowden, Clair, ‘Werther, La Navarraise and Verismo: A Matter of Taste’, Franco-British Studies 37 (2006–7): 8–11Google Scholar. Cavalleria did however face similar critical derision in Italy. See Sansone, Matteo, ‘Verga and Mascagni: The Critics’ Response to “Cavalleria Rusticana”’, Music & Letters 71/2 (1990): 204–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ See Rowden, ‘Werther, La Navarraise and Verismo’, 11; and Steven Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 402–3.

⁴¹ See Sylviane Falcinelli, ‘Massenet et l'Italie: influences croisées’, in Le naturalisme sur la scène lyrique, ed. Jean-Cristophe Branger and Alban Ramaut (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Etienne, 2004): 95–128.

⁴² The desire to escape formulaic opera through more realistic declamation and structures was by no means new (see Giger, ‘Verismo’, 297–300). For further discussion of prose in opera, see Thomas Grey, ‘Opera and Music Drama’, in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 407–8; Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle, 135–46 and 398–9; and Macdonald, Hugh, ‘The Prose Libretto’, Cambridge Opera Journal 1/2 (1989): 155–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ ‘à innover un genre, le drame lyrique intime’. Le Petit Niçois, 7 March 1895.

⁴⁴ In Rosa Newmarch, trans. and ed., The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (London: J. Lane, 1905): 203 and 256.

⁴⁵ See Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 53–60.

⁴⁶ Taruskin has described Onegin as ‘a chef d'oeuvre of stylized operatic realism: the Russian counterpart to Traviata or Manon’. See his ‘Yevgeny Onegin’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 3 November 2013).

⁴⁷ For a discussion of European-wide interest in Russian literary realism, including France, see Martin Malia, Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum (London: Belknap, 1999): 205–31. On the first French translations of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, see Frederick W.J. Hemmings, The Russian Novel in France, 1884–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950): 49–52, Vladimir Boutchik, Bibliographie des œuvres littéraires russes traduites en français: Tourguénev, Dostoevski, Léon Tolstoї (Paris: Messages, 1948), and Michel Aucoutourier, ‘La découverte de La Guerre et la Paix par la critique française’, in L'ours & le coq: trois siècles de relations franco-russes: essais en l'honneur de Michel Cadot, ed. Francine-Dominique Liechtenhan (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2000): 115–26. The 1880s also saw numerous French stage adaptations of Russian novels and first productions of Russian plays, including at André Antoine's Théâtre Libre (founded as a platform for Zola's realist stage works). See Michel Autrand, Le Théâtre en France de 1870 à 1914 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006): 168–70.

⁴⁸ See Malia, Russia under Western Eyes, 208, Hemmings, The Russian Novel in France, 32, Philip Bullock, Rosa Newmarch and Russian Music in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010): 22, and Nivat, Georges, ‘La Rencontre franco-russe au XIX^e siècle’, Esprit 11/369 (2010): 66–8Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Writers like Zola made their characters subjects of objective observation, whose fate and personalities were decided by their biological makeup and environmental factors. For de Vogüé's criticisms, see The Russian Novel, trans. Herbert Anthony Sawyer (London: Chapman and Hall, 1913): 311–12. The French original was published as Le Roman russe (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1886), having first appeared as a series in Revue des deux mondes from 1883–1886. As testament to the strength of interest in the Russian novel around the turn of the twentieth century, Le Roman russe was reprinted in 1888, 1892, 1910 and 1912 by Plon-Nourrit, and translated in the United States as The Russian Novelists, trans. Jane Loring Edmands (Boston: D. Lothrop, 1887), in Britain as The Russian Novel (see above) and in Russia as Sovremennїye russkiye pisateli: Tolstoy – Turgenev – Dostoyevsky (Moscow: V. N. Marakueva, 1887).

⁵⁰ De Vogüé, The Russian Novel, 23.

⁵¹ De Vogüé, The Russian Novel, 24.

⁵² ‘En Russie le drame musical et la littérature se sont développés simultanément et dans le même sens’. Delines, ‘Pierre Tchaїkovski’.

⁵³ See Gerald D. Turbow, ‘Art and politics: Wagnerism in France’, in Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics, ed. David Large, William Weber and Anne Dzamba Sessa (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984): 134–66.

⁵⁴ ‘Nous sommes wagnériens aujourd'hui, et nous oublions qu'un demi-siècle à peu près nous sépare déjà de l’époque où le maître a posé les fondements de la nouvelle école’. L'Eclaireur, 27 February 1895. Delines went on to further undermine Wagner's claims to newness by arguing that his ideas were borrowed from Gluck. French critics since the 1860s had been juxtaposing Gluck and Wagner: the anti-Wagnerians to show that he was not as innovative as supposed, and the pro-Wagnerians to position Wagner in tandem with a composer considered by many to be ‘the greatest composer in pre-Revolutionary France’. See Gibbons, William, ‘Music of the Future, Music of the Past: Tannhäuser and Alceste at the Paris Opéra’, 19th-Century Music 33/3 (2010): 232–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ ‘Est-ce que notre vie moderne est moins dramatique que celle des Touraniens? Pourquoi ces amours de Zarâstra et d'Anahita m'intéresseraient-elles plus vivement que celles de Mme Bovary et du petit apprenti pharmacien? Pourquoi les souffrances de Salammbô me toucheraient-elles plus vivement que les tortures de Catherine, qu'une explosion enterre vivante avec son amant dans les profondeurs d'une mine? Pourquoi l'artiste qui trouvera un motif musical pour exprimer l’état d’âme du Mage ne pourrait-il pas rendre avec une égale puissance la physionomie morale d'un Souvarine? … Les compositeurs d'opéras … faudra vivre le sujet qu'ils veulent illustrer, le pénétrer, le sentir, et je pense qu'il sera toujours plus facile à un homme de notre temps de s'identifier avec le personnage de Musotte, par exemple, qu'avec celui de Brunehilde’. L'Eclaireur, 27 February 1895.

⁵⁶ For a fuller discussion of French writings on Russian music in the nineteenth century, see Alexander, ‘Glinka's A Life for the Tsar in Nice’ and Elaine Brody, ‘Russians in Paris (1889–1914)’, in Russian and Soviet Music: Essays for Boris Schwarz, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984): 157–83.

⁵⁷ ‘L’école russe, … en plein efflorescence, semble appelée à un avenir vraiment glorieux, et qui sait? peut-être à renouveler les formes de cet art si mobile et à prendre victorieusement la tête du grand mouvement musical européen.’ Le Petit Niçois, 28 February 1895.

⁵⁸ ‘Si je me suis donné pour mission de faire connaître en France le drame lyrique russe, c'est que les compositeurs russes, Tchaїkowsky en tête, ont depuis longtemps compris que l'opéra, s'il a la prétention d’être une œuvre d'art, doit être en même temps une œuvre littéraire, c'est à-dire une œuvre de vie humaine, une œuvre dans laquelle l'orchestre s'unit intimement au poème pour donner toute la psychologie du drame et peindre symphoniquement le caractère de chaque personnage.’ L'Eclaireur, 27 February 1895.

⁵⁹ See David Baguley, ‘Pushkin and Mérimée, the French Connection: On Hoaxes and Imposters’, in Two Hundred Years of Pushkin, vol. 3, ed. Joe Andrew and Robert Reid (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004): 178.

⁶⁰ See Bullock, Philip, ‘Untranslated and Untranslatable? Pushkin's Poetry in England, 1892–1931’, Translation and Literature 20 (2011): 348–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶¹ These prose translations were as follows: Henri Dupont, Œuvres choisies de A. S. Pouchkine (Paris: au Comptoir des imprimeurs unis, 1847); Ivan Turgenev and Louis Viardot, Onéguine in La Revue nationale 12 and 13 (1863); and Paul Béesau, Eugène Onéguine (Paris: A. Frank, 1868). The first verse translation was Wladimir Mikhaїlow's Eugène Onéghine (Paris: Auguste Ghio, 1884).

⁶² See Vissarion Belinsky, ‘Eugene Onegin: An Encyclopaedia of Russian Life’, in Russian Views of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, ed. and trans. Sona Stephan Hoisington (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988): 26–7, as compared to Béesau, Eugène Onéguine, 5: ‘une galerie de tableaux pris çà et là dans l'existence russe’.

⁶³ ‘L'idée dominante est d'une haute portée morale: insuffisance et vanité d'une de dissipation égoïstes, − noblesse et grandeur de la femme tendre et forte, qui sacrifie tout au sentiment du devoir et à sa dignité’. Mikhaїlow, Eugène Onéguine, iii.

⁶⁴ For more on the retrospective transformation of Pushkin's Onegin into the superfluous man, see Frey, ‘Nowhere Man’, 213–15.

⁶⁵ ‘L'auteur a personnifié, dans les deux types principaux du roman, deux tendances de l'aristocratie russe; dans l'un, la lassitude et l’énervement qui conduit d'une manière fatale à la débauche; dans l'autre, les vagues aspirations de l'espérance qui soutiennent la vie en faisant croire à un avenir meilleur’. ‘Onéguine’, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIX^e siècle, vol. 11 (Paris: Larousse, 1874): 1,349. The translation of Turgenev's speech was first printed in the Bibliothèque universelle et revue Suisse (1879).

⁶⁶ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Pages from the Journal of an Author, trans. Samuel Solomonovich Koteliansky and John Middleton Murry (London: Maunsel, 1916): 48–9.

⁶⁷ ‘Aleko et Onéguine sont, en effet, les prototypes des Petchorine de Lermontov, des Roudine et des Lavretsky de Tourgueneff, des Bolkonsky de Léon Tolstoї, des Karamazov et Raskolnikov de Dostoїevsky etc.’. Halpérine-Kaminsky, ‘La mouvement littéraire en Russie’, La Nouvelle revue (May–June 1887). These characters appear, respectively, in A Hero of our Time, Rudin, Home of the Gentry, War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment.

⁶⁸ See Gasparov, Five Operas and a Symphony, 58–95, and Frey, ‘Nowhere Man’, 209–30.

⁶⁹ ‘Pontarmé’ was a group pseudonym. Although the article, which appeared two days after the premiere, was framed as a review, it was undoubtedly written in absentia, since there were no references to the performance or the audience reaction.

⁷⁰ ‘Il choisit naguère ce poème d'Oneguine, de Pouschkine, qui n'est ni un roman d'aventures, ni un conta sentimental, mais une étude psychologique’. Le Petit Parisien, 9 March 1895.

⁷¹ ‘Oneguine, c'est le type de l'homme désenchanté, possédé et tourmenté par l'ennui, souffrant de la trivialité de l'existence. La vie et la société ne l'intéressent plus. Son âme s'est prématurément usée, et, pour qu'il revive à l'amour, qu'il a méprisé, il faudra que des catastrophes se soient produites …. Il déclare à Tatiana que l'amour est mort en lui, que sa vie sentimentale est finie … rien ne l’émeut plus.’ Le Petit Parisien, 9 March 1895.

⁷² ‘Si las qu'il soit de tout’ and ‘Oneguine traine une existence vide, dont l'inutilité lui pèse’. Le Petit Parisien, 9 March 1895.

⁷³ Vanor, for example, wrote the manifesto L'Art symboliste (Paris: Vanier, 1889).

⁷⁴ ‘M. Vanor … a défendu Onéguine, œuvre d'une grande psychologie musicale, sincère et forte’. L'Eclaireur, 13 March 1895. The speech was printed in Le Phare du littoral, 13 March 1895: ‘Onéguine … met en scène l’âme intime des personnages, c'est-à-dire, psychologiquement … que Onéguine est un héros moderne’.

⁷⁵ ‘Son égoïsme souffrant, ce mal du siècle dont il sent les atteintes, cette inquiétude de la fin de la vie et de la mort de l'amour, tout cela est transposé dans le poème et dans la musique … Le doute hamlétique peut résider dans un cœur paré d'un plastron plissé, et des passions shakespeariennes agitent souvent un homme déguisé du plus banal smoking.’ Le Phare du littoral, 13 March 1895.

⁷⁶ Hamlet had become for the symbolists the very embodiment of late-nineteenth-century doubt and disillusionment. See Helen Philips Bailey, Hamlet in France: From Voltaire to Laforgue (Geneva: Droz, 1964): 152.

⁷⁷ Le Petit Niçois, 7 March 1895.

⁷⁸ ‘Il y a dans cette pièce un parti pris manifeste de renoncer aux formes conventionnelles de l'ancien opéra, de faire de la vie réelle, autant que le langage musical le peut permettre. Certains détails de mise en scène accusent franchement ce parti pris. Au premier acte, par exemple, le rideau se lève sur une scène de ménage nous montrant cette bonne bourgeoise qu'est Mme Larina, maniant une bassine et aidée de la Niania, la vieille nourrice, en train de faire ses confitures. Au second acte, la valse, le cotillon, le caquet des mamans qui font tapisserie, le babil des jeunes filles … Rien ne manque, pas même le banal “Charmante soirée” des indifférents. Puis, à la suite, vient le duel, très correctement réglé et avec un parfait souci de la vérité.’ La Nouvelle revue, March 1895.

⁷⁹ Gasparov has made a similar observation to Gallet in his Five Operas and a Symphony, 75–7.

⁸⁰ ‘Son réalisme se double de pittoresque. Le chœur dansé de la seconde scène du premier acte est charmant.’ La Nouvelle revue, March 1895.

⁸¹ ‘Il y a dans Oneguine un “ballet”, mais ce ballet, lui aussi, est moderne …. C'est un bal, et on y doit danser comme dans un bal d'aujourd’hui.’ Le Petit Parisien, 9 March 1895.

⁸² It is possible that Tchaikovsky's dance music was heard as contemporary because it had become so synonymous with the late nineteenth-century Russian Imperial style. See Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 284–92.

⁸³ ‘Tchaïkowsky … fut un novateur. C'est dans la vie moderne que ses drames lyriques puisèrent leur inspiration.’ Le Petit Parisien, 9 March 1895.

⁸⁴ Le XIX^e siècle, 21 January 1892.

⁸⁵ See Rowden, ‘Werther, La Navarraise and Verismo’, 7–12.

⁸⁶ Charpentier, discussing his realist drame lyrique, Louise, in 1900, particularly espoused opera that could speak to all classes. See Huebner, French Opera at the fin de siècle, 436–7.

⁸⁷ ‘L'auteur d’Onéguine, qui parle mieux et plus familièrement à l’âme de la foule’. La Nouvelle revue, March 1895.

⁸⁸ ‘Elle est forte, sans mièvreries et sans complications, sans cascades ni enjolivures: elle ne manque pas de charme et reste constamment mélodieuse, sans avoir aucune des hardiesses de la nouvelle école’. L'Eclaireur, 8 March 1895.

⁸⁹ Evidence of how formative previews were can be found in Pontarmé's ‘review’, which lifted a phrase directly from Delines’ preview article: ‘peindre symphoniquement le caractère de chaque personnage’.

⁹⁰ ‘Nous retrouvons groupés dans l'interprétation d’Onéguine les moins bons éléments de la troupe’. Le Guide musical, 31 March 1895.

⁹¹ Onegin took 2,064.75 francs on its first night. The average nightly receipt for the 1894–5 season was 1,232.98 francs. Numbers calculated from the records of nightly takings in ‘Grand Théâtre de l'Opéra de Nice’, VM DOS-5 (1), BNF.

⁹² The Théâtre Municipal's poster for Onegin can be found in ‘Recueil factice programmes et affichettes concernant les spectacles donnés au grand Théâtre de l'Opéra de Nice’, 4-RF-81874, BNF.

⁹³ ‘You want some action on the stage? It is banal and superficial action, such as that of a quarrel or a duel; it is a partial return to those conventions that were alleged to have been broken down’ (Veut-on du mouvement sur la scène? c'est une action banale et toute de surface, comme celle d'une querelle ou d'un duel; c'est un retour partiel à ces conventions que l'on prétendait briser). Le Guide musical, 31 March 1895.

⁹⁴ ‘Is all the action intimate? Then it is devoid of sufficient explanation, a succession of unsubstantiated feelings and actions, such as the love of Tatiana for Onegin, whose nature is so different from hers; Tatiana's marriage later on; Lenski's provocation; even the ennui of the main character’ (L'action est-elle tout intime? c'est alors, faute d'explications suffisantes, une succession de sentiments et d'actes trop peu justifiés, tels l'amour de Tatiana pour une nature aussi différente de la sienne que l'est celle d'Onéguine, le mariage ultérieur de Tatiana, la provocation de Lenski, l'ennui même du héros principal). Le Guide musical, 31 March 1895.

⁹⁵ ‘Mais il reste encore dans Onéguine le manqué de réalité et les sacrifices à la convention que j'ai signalés, dans certaines scènes’. Le Phare du littoral, 9 March 1895.

⁹⁶ ‘Le tentative présente d'autant plus d'intérêt qu'un mouvement musical caractéristique se dessine actuellement en Russie, auquel participent une pléiade des rénovateurs parmi lesquels César Cui, au premier rang, puis Rimsky-Korsakoff, Sokolonoff, Glazunoff et quelques autres. Ces artistes de tendances modernistes travaillent à une réforme de l'art musical russe donc Tchaїkowsky est un des représentants officiellement consacrés.’ Le Phare du littoral, 9 March 1895.

⁹⁷ ‘Onéguine … appartient à une période intermédiaire dans le développement de l'art musical chez les Russes’. Le Petit Niçois, 28 February 1895. The frequent references to Cui as a better example of a modern Russian composer would have been prompted not only by his literary presence in France, but also by his opera Le Flibustier, which premiered in Paris in 1894. Le Flibustier was a near verbatim setting of Jean Richepin's 1888 play of the same name and, like Onegin, was discussed as a modern drame lyrique. Although the opera was poorly received (Howard Sutton gives a summary of its reception in The Life and Work of Jean Richepin (Paris: Minard, 1961): 172–4), some critics, such as Camille Bellaigue, thought it a fine example of literature opera, and a more faithful musical setting of the French language than most French composers had achieved to date (see Bellaigue's review in Revue des deux mondes (1894): 705–9).

⁹⁸ ‘Petit drame rustique, dans le goût des œuvres rapides, pittoresques et violentes, dont Cavalleria rusticana a fourni le type … l’Orage est un ouvrage … d'une tendance bien franchement moderne’. Gallet, La Nouvelle revue, March 1895.

⁹⁹ These complaints echoed those made in Russia in 1879, when critics had deemed Onegin a frivolous tale of cuckoldry befitting of operetta. See Buckler, The Literary Lorgnette, 120–23.

¹⁰⁰ ‘Tatiana s’éprend d'Onéguine, qui a des scrupules et ne veut pas l’épouser à cause de son âge trop avancé … il trouve Tatiana mariée au prince Gremine, beaucoup plus âgé qu'elle et que lui Oneguine’. Le Matin, 27 February 1895.

¹⁰¹ ‘Mais de là à faire qu'une œuvre musicale exprimant ce doute et ces passions soit captivante, il y a loin. Le talent ne consiste pas à exprimer ces sentiments sous un vêtement plutôt que sous un autre; il consiste, ce nous semble, à les bien exprimer. Ce dernier cas est-il celui d’Onéguine? That is the question!’ Phare du littoral, 13 March 1895.

¹⁰² Le Guide musical, 31 March 1895.

¹⁰³ ‘Le ridicule devient encore plus grand. Vous voulez supprimer la convention au théâtre? Alors supprimez le théâtre lui-même, puisqu'il ne vit que de cela; supprimez l'opéra où des gens se chantent ce qu'ils pourraient parfaitement se dire.’ Petit Niçois, 13 March 1895. Buckler has summarized how Russian critics similarly ‘thought that operatic works depicting a more or less contemporary reality violated established generic norms’. See The Literary Lorgnette, 120.

¹⁰⁴ ‘Lecteurs de Paul Bourget, admirateurs du pur roman psychologique, soyez francs avec vous-mêmes. Ne vous êtes-vous pas surpris parfois à tourner d'un seul coup quelques pages à la dérobée, et à trouver un peu longues, à part vous, ses descriptions continues d’états d’âme plus ou moins réels? Ne craignez pas d'en faire l'aveu; ce n'est pas des auditeurs d'Onéguine que vous avez à redouter des reproches; ils compatissent trop bien à votre ennui.’ Le Guide musical, 31 March 1895.

¹⁰⁵ ‘Nous concluons, La commission municipale, en même temps qu'elle ratifiait le choix d’Onéguine comme nouveauté à créer au cours de cet hiver, rayant du programme de la saison le Tannhäuser, connu ici depuis l'an dernier seulement, voulait-elle épargner ainsi au patriotisme chatouilleux d'un certain public la perspective d'une fâcheuse rencontre entre le Russe Tschaïkowsky et l'Allemand Wagner?’ Le Guide Musical, 31 March 1895.