This Weekend: Singing in Russian and 4 Romance Languages
By • February 5, 2026 0 17
Two concerts, one on Friday night and the other on Sunday afternoon, promise a memorable weekend for lovers of classical singing. Though the first will include narration in English, the sung text will be Russian. As for the second, expect to hear French, Italian, Spanish and Catalan.
Based on Alexander Pushkin’s 1833 verse novel, “Eugene Onegin” is one of the two most often performed of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 11 operas, the other being “The Queen of Spades.” The Metropolitan Opera/English National Opera production, at Lincoln Center from April 20 to May 16, runs nearly four hours. A highlight of the Washington, D.C.-based Russian Chamber Art Society’s 20th anniversary season will be RCAS’s condensed (two-and-a-half-hour) concert production of “Eugene Onegin,” to be presented this Friday, Feb. 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Embassy of France, 4101 Reservoir Road NW.
A tragic love story, “Eugene Onegin” is somewhat unusual in that (spoiler) the soprano does not expire. It is the tenor, Lensky — lover of the mezzo-soprano, Olga, rather than the soprano, Tatiana — who sings the long goodbye, before he faces the baritone, Onegin, in a duel.
Tatiana will be sung by Romanian American soprano Esther Tonea, a former Adler Fellow with San Francisco Opera who appeared in the title role in Wolf Trap Opera’s 2023 production of Handel’s “Semele.” Also in the cast: mezzo-soprano Anastasiia Sidorova, tenor Fanyong Du, baritone Timothy Mix and bass Denis Sedov (as Prince Gremin, who … well, I don’t want to give away everything).
Pianists Genadi Zagor and RCAS Artistic Director Vera Danchenko-Stern will accompany the singers and Signature Theatre regular John Leslie Wolfe will narrate. Tickets, which include a post-concert reception, are available at thercas.com for $65.
A recital by tenor Benjamin Bernheim and pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson — part of Vocal Arts DC’s 35th anniversary season — will make Feb. 8 an unusually romantic Super Bowl Sunday.
In 2024, the Paris-born Bernheim, who was raised in Geneva and studied at the Lausanne Conservatory, performed at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony and the reopening of Notre-Dame. Matheson, a native of Canada’s Prince Edward Island who trained at the Cleveland Institute and Manhattan School of Music, is on the coaching and conducting staff of the Zurich Opera House. The pair’s Sunday afternoon program is inspired by their album “Douce France: Mélodies & Chansons.”
“Douce France” — that is, “Sweet France” — the title of a Charles Trenet piece written in 1947, is one of three 20th-century cabaret songs on the program, along with Joseph Kosma’s “Les feuilles mortes” of 1945 (which we know as “Autumn Leaves”), with lyrics by Jacques Prévert, and Jacques Brel’s “Quand on n’a que l’amour/If We Only Have Love” of 1956.
The other selections on the program, most by late 19th– and early 20th-century Romantic composers such as Ernest Chausson and Henri Duparc (in French), Joaquín Turina (in Spanish) and Giacomo Puccini (in Italian), fall more clearly into the art-song genre.
Two composers whose works are rarely heard at vocal recitals are represented: Buenos Aires-born Alberto Ginastera and Barcelona-born Frederic Mompou. Ginastera’s folk music-influenced “Canción al árbol del olvido” — Spanish for “Song of the Tree of Forgetfulness” — from his student composition “Dos canciones” of 1938, sets a text by Uruguayan poet Fernán Silva Valdés. Mompou’s “Damunt de tu només les flors” — Catalan for “Above You Only Flowers” — is from his “Combat del somni/Dream Combat” of the 1940s, set to sonnets by Josep Janés.
The recital by Bernheim and Matheson, relocated from the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater to George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, 731 21st St. NW, begins at 2 p.m. (allowing time to heat up the wings before kickoff). Tickets, available at vocalartsdc.org, are $40.10, $50.85 and $61.60.
