Preserves

. . . singing in chorus as directed

on orders which of course presume

that thievish mouths cannot consume

their masters’ berries undetected

so long as they’re employed in song . . .

Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

Late in life Madame Oda Slobodskaya – the supreme exponent of Tatyana’s role – gave a lecture at the Guildhall School of Music on Eugene Onegin. She began by outlining the characters in Tchaikovsky’s opera and then proceeded to describe the scenes with the help of extracts on tape operated by two technicians.