The new Onegin merits an almost unreserved recommendation […] the central performances by Mirella Freni and Thomas Allen are compellingly vivid.

What Freni does is sensitive, intelligent and often touching. She can still sound vulnerable—as Tatyana must...Allen responds to her...Levine draws fine playing from the Staatskapelle Dresden, though he seems to find the opera more conventional than it is.

a magnificent Onegin in Thomas Allen, the most satisfying account of the title-role ever recorded. It is matched by the Tatiana of Mirella Freni, even at a late stage in her career readily conveying girlish freshness in her voice. The other parts are also strongly taken...What welds all these fine components into a rich and exciting whole is the conducting of James Levine.

this is a big performance: slowish, with the beautiful melodies drawn out in an almost Italian fashion but with Tchaikovsky’s Russian coloring intact, with big climaxes and great tension, and the Dresden forces play stunningly for Levine.