"The first opera production I encountered in the cozy 96-seat Rosemary and Meredith Willson Theater at the Juilliard School, two years ago, was a stripped-down version of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.” Shorn of its grand-opera trappings, it had a fascinating intimacy and a searing intensity, but it also felt a little the way it must seem being inside a pressure cooker."