His calling for Olga in the final minutes of his life was the highlight

His calling for Olga in the final minutes of his life was the highlight of the evening.Amanda Roocroft’s Tatiana had some memorable moments, and she is an affecting artist, but frumpish wigs and frocks did nothing to assist the illusion of youth. Nino Surguladze’s engaging Olga is established early on as a tomboy with irresistible feminine charms. But in the end the stagecraft is simply not up to the job.The singing, for the most part, is – though I cannot remember when this opera was last quite so dominated by a Lensky and Olga. But movement and choreography (Linda Dobell) is hopelessly inept and McDonald’s designs are impractical. I like the way Pimlott isolates his protagonists at key moments, and his boldness in playing against Tchaikovsky’s festive music to depict the St Petersburg ball as more of a wake than a celebration – the idle rich as the living dead. But after Onegin’s rejection, rain begins to fall and Tatiana’s nameday ball becomes a grotesque pantomime.

Onegin – her Prince Charming – is fleetingly her escort, but it’s only wishful thinking; Onegin is flirting with his friend Lensky’s betrothed, Olga, and the death of innocence is imminent. The winter of discontent will be long – but picturesque.
It could all have worked so well. And so the Russia of her youth is the Russia of folklore. Antony McDonald’s designs are a parody of picture-book wholesomeness. Well-scrubbed peasants are set against an idyll of green fields, tranquil lake and rosy sunsets.

They were never going to be, but if they maintain their rediscovered popularity without becoming the new Madness, they’ll be doing well.Touring to 2 May. Steven Pimlott’s interesting but wilful staging of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is torn from the pages of those hopelessly romantic stories through which its heroine Tatiana dreams her way through life Books are her refuge, her salvation. And, once it’s clear that fantasy can never be her reality, her final exit is made literally through them – a concealed door in her library. As the first mainland UK date of a hectic tour, it confirmed The Ordinary Boys as the new torch-holders of the Oasis effect – that is, a band who aspire to credibility while unable to escape their singer’s ubiquity in the tabloids.While not even close to matching Liam Gallagher’s swaggering magnetism, Preston is a capable showman. His shirt, he proudly tells us, is from Topman, and he still manages an energetic pogo while singing and playing guitar.Refreshingly, no mention of Big Brother or his love-interest Chantelle is made, and the commitment of both performers and crowddissipates any lingering reality-show tedium.Despite the energy generated during ska-punk anthems such as “Boys Will Be Boys”, “Week in Week out” and “Life Will Be the Death of Me”, The Ordinary Boys are still no more than an average indie-rock band.Were they otherwise, their unilateral newfound admiration would have reached them without tele-visual help, and the question of whether Preston’s extracurricular activities has blown their chances of being the new Jam or Specials is moot. Yet such easily earned fame always comes at a price, and the fee paid here – whether Preston cares now that his fanbase has increased hugely – is credibility.
Paul Weller – the sound and style of whose band, The Jam, Preston and company have reverentially adopted – questioned the Big Brother move as the programme was being aired.And what of Preston’s bandmates? James Gregory, William Brown and Simon Goldring knew little of Preston’s decision before he entered the studio, and reacted with muted bemusement when initially questioned about it.It’s likely that the huge crowd – swelled by rubberneckers – has convinced them they’re on the right track. Not a bad reward for sitting in a house full of strangers for a few weeks.

Sam Preston’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother was undoubtedly an astute move. Whatever The Ordinary Boys singer may or may not need the money for, what it did for his band’s flagging career must have made for more of a windfall than any number of hard-slog tours around the UK. And not even his anti-star frailty can take the bittersweet taste of rehashed history out of a show which seems to collapse in a self-mocking, out-of-key parody after the slow-burning “Happy Since I Met You”.As the band finale with a thrashed-up version of the sub-Blur “Freakin’ Out”, you are reminded of the one real fatal flaw in Coxon’s live solo shows – he’s just not a front man a la Albarn, which is a shame because Coxon’s recorded output far outshines Blur’s It’s just his live shows that leave you wanting.. The lo-fi navel gazing of his earlier albums has been replaced by a full, fat and melodic guitar onslaught worthy of The Ramones or The Buzzcocks – the two bands his latest album most recalls.Take “I Can’t Look At Your Skin” with its buzzsaw energy, or the thrash pop tones of “You Will Always Let me Down”, songs that beg to be included on a best of 1977 compilation album.As the band work through an hour of such punk wanabe classics, it is slowly becomes clear that the biggest problem with Coxon’s need for an authentic voice is that he’s just too self-consciously stuck in the past. So just as his former frontman has culture-vultured his way from world music to cartoon character, so Coxon has ploughed an ever- deeper punk-rock furrow.Despite his obviously frail character traits (he finds relationships hard to sustain, would prefer to keep animals) his music sounds increasingly muscular.

And yet as Coxon struts, spits and barks his way through a set of retro-punk belligerence, it becomes increasingly clear just how fresh those old memories are, in fact so much of what he does seems to be defined by his opposition to Blur.His entire solo voyage has been about regaining an air of authenticity in the wake of Blur’s artifice. Painfully shy, racked with self-doubt and seemingly at odds with the wilful disposability of the band’s pop sound, it came as little surprise that his departure from the dizzy heights of the Top of the Pops day job saw him taking the well-trodden pop path to both solo infamy and the doors of the Priory, where he was treated for alcoholism.
With this month’s release of his sixth solo album, Love Travels at Illegal Speeds, however, such personal diversions as alcoholism and pop stardom would appear to have been left in the distant past. When Blur delivered the Brit-Pop blueprint with Parklife, the band member who seemed least likely to overcome the sudden glare of the limelight was the guitarist, Coxon. The crowd cheers in unison, safe in the knowledge that the suited- and-booted frontman is still the archetypal reluctant star.