The clue is certainly not in the title. For at least the first three quarters of English Touring Opera’s new production of Eugene Onegin this is definitely Tatiana’s story, and the opera’s arrogant but tragic antihero slips firmly into second place.

Fair enough? ETO’s decision to make Tchaikovsky’s opera the centrepiece of its spring season probably has a large part to do with their choice of Tatiana, the company favourite Amanda Echalaz. Possessed of a fearless, gleaming soprano, Echalaz’s Tatiana delivers the goods, and in the passionate letter scene she pours out all her frustrated longing with limpid elegance and radiant warmth. Come the final curtain calls, and it’s she, not Roland Wood’s Onegin, who gets the last bow.

Yet Echalaz isn’t quite the finished article, and in the dim light of James Conway’s production, which treads a sometimes uneasy line between dowdy realism and moody abstraction, her poise isn’t always enough.

It’s only when we get to the Act II party scene that her placid passivity — and Conway’s placid stagecraft — slowly starts to develop into something more interesting: the normally tedious scene with Tatiana’s silly French tutor, Monsieur Triquet (an unhammy Patrick Ashcroft), is intriguingly recast as a deadly faux pas on his part that leaves her humiliated and Onegin appalled by her lack of class.

It’s a nice touch, but it and other deft manoeuvres don’t disguise the weak emotional chemistry between the two leads. Wood’s Onegin is smooth and fluent, and his diction crystal clear (a pity he’s singing the turgid translation by David Lloyd-Jones) but he’s short on the vocal and the dramatic allure to make us either really envy or really despise him; peevishly flinging chairs around the wreckage of the final tableau doesn’t make up the shortfall. At the end, when Tatiana has to choose between him and the doddery but sincere Prince Gremin — Geoffrey Moses, bringing a dignified gravitas to his big aria — you wonder slightly why she would even need to think about it.

The rest is as much of a mixed bag. After a tentative, choppy start, Michael Rosewell guides the ETO orchestra through a well-paced and fervently energetic performance, even if the reduced string section can’t always supply those all-important surging crescendos.

The “secondary” couple — Marie Elliot’s confident Olga (curiously playing Tatiana’s sister more as the worldly coquette than fun-loving innocent) and Michael Bracegirdle’s grainy but full-blooded Lensky — are both up to ETO’s reliable standard. A slow-burning Onegin, and currently one that’s a little rough around the edges — but it should certainly tighten up during its long travels across the country.

Tour details: www.englishtouringopera.org.uk

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010