Tchaikovsky enjoyed composing Yevgeni Onegin. He expressed his fulfillment in a famous letter to Sergey Taneyev. What could his enthusiasm convey about the content of the project? Music criticism has taken Tchaikovsky’s words as proof for the thesis that the opera is connected to autobiographical circumstances. In this mode of thinking, the quality of Tchaikovsky’s music is the result of the composer’s identification with the subject matter. Despite the objection of several Tchaikovsky scholars, the autobiographical paradigm remains very much alive in the reception of Tchaikovsky’s music. As an alternative, Tchaikovsky scholarship has explored a hermeneutical approach that would link his music to its context in Russian society and culture. In this paper, I present another possible reaction to Tchaikovsky’s statement: an exploration of the composer’s approach to musical characterization. Analysis of some key scenes reveals that the definition of characters and situations by musical means is more precise than standard interpretations of the opera would concede. This discovery may lead to a new assessment of characterization as a critical tool to refine the definition of Tchaikovsky’s position in European music history. The method may be applied to examples outside his operatic output, such as Serenade for Strings and the Fifth Symphony.

中文翻译：

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柴可夫斯基、奥涅金和人物塑造的艺术

柴可夫斯基喜欢创作叶夫根尼·奥涅金。他在给谢尔盖·塔涅耶夫的一封著名信中表达了他的成就。他对项目内容的热情能传达什么信息？音乐批评以柴可夫斯基的话作为歌剧与自传背景相关的论点的证据。在这种思维模式下，柴可夫斯基音乐的品质是作曲家对题材认同的结果。尽管遭到一些柴可夫斯基学者的反对，但自传范式在柴可夫斯基音乐的接受中仍然非常活跃。作为替代方案，柴可夫斯基的学术研究探索了一种解释学方法，将他的音乐与俄罗斯社会和文化的背景联系起来。在本文中，我提出了对柴可夫斯基声明的另一种可能的反应：探索作曲家的音乐表征方法。对一些关键场景的分析表明，通过音乐手段对人物和情境的定义比歌剧的标准解释更为精确。这一发现可能会导致对表征的新评估，作为完善柴可夫斯基在欧洲音乐史上地位的定义的关键工具。该方法可以应用于他的歌剧作品之外的例子，例如弦乐小夜曲和第五交响曲。