HOW hard can it be to stage a three hour opera with a cast of around 70 in just ten days - all from a standing start?

Or in fact two operas in the same week?

Well not that hard by the look of it at Bryanston School's Coade Theatre on Tuesday night, when Dorset Opera pulled off a spectacular and stunning triumph with Eugene Onegin: story Alexander Pushkin, music Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

Okay so it was performed in English and not in Russian but let's not be picky shall we?

The full house of several hundred gave the stellar cast and performance rapturous applause at the end and several huge appreciations at various points.

Bournemouth Echo:

The Dorset Opera Festival is staged every year and brings together amateur and professional performers from across the world.

The operas are staged (as they have been for many years) at the end of a two week summer school for those between 16-25.

The cast may be thrown together in the literal sense, but the performances are the product of sheer hard work, supreme talent, utter professionalism, blood, sweat, toil and a few tears.

Then there is the little detail of a year's work pulling it all together by Dorset Opera's artistic director, the larger than life Roderick Kennedy who took the helm in 2005 and who has taken the annual festival soaring to another level.

In recent years audiences have delighted in, amongst others, Tosca, Otello, La Traviata and The Flying Dutchman.

The story of Onegin is of a selfish cad who casually and cruelly rejects a young woman's love, shoots his best friend in a duel, decides he indeed loves the woman after all but ends up humiliated and shattered when he is in turn rejected by her.

Anna Patalong is spellbinding as that woman, the central character of Tatyana and Mark Stone magnificent as the reckless Onegin.

But full credit must go to every single member of cast and production crew for a performance that is by turns rich, vibrant, dazzling, colourful, poignant, emotional and irresistible.

It's a terrific tribute to Pushkin's verse novel (the best loved work of Russian literature of its day) and Tchaikovsky's lyric opera.

And did I mention two operas? There was also the other small matter of Verdi's Macbeth by the same production team and chorus, though different professional soloists.

Macbeth (tonight) is also on Friday. Onegin is performed again on Thursday and Saturday.