In an interview with musicologist Vladimir Dudin, world-renowned mezzo-soprano Elena Zarem­ba talks about her work on the role of Filipievna in the premiere production of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” at the Paris Opera, directed by famous actor and filmmaker Ralph Fiennes, with conductor Semyon Bychkov as musical director. The singer recounts one of the longest, yet most rewarding, rehearsal periods of her career, as well as the director’s meticulous work with the soloists, aimed at rejecting stage cliches and achieving an organic presence onstage in the name of fidelity to Pushkin’s text. At the same time, the interviewee also highlighted the difficulties the newly minted director faced. All of those stemmed from his unfamiliarity with the singer’s unique presence in an operatic production, conditioned by the laws of musical time. According to Elena Zaremba, the high artistic quality of the premiere of “Eugene Onegin” was influenced by the conductor’s attention to the nuances of phrasing and the details of the score, his meticulous pursuit of a high-quality performance. According to the singer, Bychkov’s approach stems from his inheritance of the traditions of the Leningrad conducting school.