Thomas Allen as Eugene Onegin

In 1997 acclaimed English baritone Thomas Allen sketched himself in a role with which he has been closely associated. He sang Eugene Onegin in Andrei Serban’s production for Welsh National Opera in 1980, and went on to perform the role internationally. On 2 June 1986 he made his only appearance as Onegin at Covent Garden in a revival of the popular production originally directed by Peter Hall in 1971 and revived under the direction of Richard Gregson. On the night Allen was suffering from a heavy cold, but as Andrew Clements wrote in the Financial Times (4 June 1986) ‘one would have hardly suspected it either in the firmness of his singing, impeccably articulated, or the fierce concentration of his acting, presenting an Onegin whose intellectual disdain is combined with a scarcely repressed and slightly threatening physicality.’