Young ballerinas dancing midair from a scene in Eugene Onegin, a play presented by the Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre of Russia that will run in the Tianqiao Performing Arts Center in Beijing from Thursday to Sunday. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Last year his plays The Three Sisters and Masquerade were presented during the Modern Drama Valley in Shanghai, and this year, while his creation The Government Inspector was staged at the Daning Theater on the same day Eugene Onegin premiered in Shanghai.

Tuminas' Onegin is nothing but pure beauty, says Shanghai-based theater critic Wang Hong.

"I highly recommend the play to everyone who yearns for beauty and poetry," she says. "You will experience the ultimate height of theater art, as the combination of literature, visual art, performance, music and dance."

The play is based on a novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), a classic of Russian literature. The story follows Onegin, a bored dandy who rejects the high society of St. Petersburg in favor of a life in the countryside. Selfish and lacking empathy, he rejects the love of a young admirer, Tatyana, and ends up killing his friend in a duel.

Years later, an older Onegin looks back and finds himself consumed by loss and remorse. He visits Tatyana, who is now married to a general, and asks her to elope with him. Tatyana admits that she still loves him but rejects him in her determination to remain faithful to her husband. Onegin is left wallowing in his loneliness, unable to find meaning in his life.