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LISTENERS' BOX
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Responses to Recent Issues
Costume Drama
As general director, however, I must strongly protest Ms. Miller’s mean-spirited, ill-informed, and unwarranted attack on North Bay Opera’s costume designer, Vivian Roubal, who spent dozens of hours researching the costumes and hundreds of hours with her dedicated crew sewing them.
Contrary to Ms. Miller’s assertion, Olga and Tatyana were not “dumped” into pre-1815 Empire gowns. Women’s waistlines fell and rose haphazardly throughout the 1820s, and it was not unusual to see young women in high-waisted dresses throughout the decade — particularly the daughters of a provincial Russian widow in straightened circumstances. No stretch-knit materials were used, only natural fibers including wool, silk, and cotton.
Onegin’s stirrup pants (“having no basis in history,” according to Ms. Miller) can be seen in paintings from the second decade of the 19th-century, and were worn by gentlemen of fashion up to the Victorian era. Tatyana’s white ball gown in Act III is not anachronistic; what is anachronistic is Ms. Miller’s calling it a wedding gown. Wedding gowns in the upper classes could be white, blue, pink, gray, or any color except red or black before 1840, when Queen Victoria set the wedding fashion firmly to white.
Prior to that, a ball gown could be white (in this case with elaborate embroidery and a red sash) without inviting snide comments. Since it is in this scene that Onegin learns that Tatyana has married, any associations that a modern audience may make with a wedding are entirely conducive to an appreciation of Pushkin’s sense of irony.
I regret to say that Ms. Miller’s review damages SFCV’s reputation more than it does North Bay Opera’s.
— Philip Kuttner, General Director, North Bay Opera
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