Newlyweds in real life in Va. Opera's 'Eugene Onegin'

Here is the arc of their romance: Youngsters, thrust into each other's arms during 'La Traviata' rehearsals in Des Moines, Iowa. Budding professionals, ripped apart by careers. Emerging artists, singing onstage together ' but smitten with the wrong people.

That emerging artist phase is where our story begins. Lights up as a Virginia Opera rehearsal for Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin'  (Own-YAY-gin, with a hard 'g') is in progress in a backstage hall at the Harrison Opera House.

As Miller prepares to walk  onstage,  Mitina goes up to him, takes his hands, looks him in the eye, kisses him quickly on his right cheek, then releases him.

Wearing jeans and a T-shirt ' more Brando than Pavarotti ' the tenor struts into the scene playing the poet Lensky, who is mortified to find a friend flirting with his sweetheart, Olga.

Mitina then enters as Tatiana, looking shocked that the friend, Eugene Onegin, so soon after rejecting her sincere affections, has gone after her frivolous sister Olga.

Now a duel will take place, and the outcome won't be pretty.

'Eugene Onegin,' opening Friday, is Virginia Opera's first Russian opera, an event that prompted an entire 'Virginia Celebrates Russia'  festival. It's also the first time that the 33-year-old company has cast a married couple in principal roles.

Peter Mark, the Opera's artistic director, on hand for last week's rehearsal, didn't realize they were a twosome when he cast them more than a year ago.

'The first clue I had was when Veronica suddenly showed up for the 'Susannah' rehearsal,' Mark said. 'I thought, 'Oh, my God, did she get the dates wrong'''

Miller portrayed Sam in the 2006 production of 'Susannah.' Mitina, by then his fiancee, had come to cheer him on.

Mark couldn't think of another such instance. 'We once had two people onstage who then got married ' but they didn't stay married,' he said, cutting a humorous look.

If he had known they were a duo, he still would have cast them.

Besides their talent and looks, hiring a married couple 'solves a rooming situation,' he said, since the Virginia Opera finds local hosts to house  its singers.

Scene two: the tidy Virginia Beach condo of Gina Kennedy and Gene Hite. On a recent morning, Kennedy said she admired the 'give and take' that goes on between the two, and wanted to hear the story of their romance. So she and her little dog, Corky, sat in her living room overlooking the Chesapeake Bay as their tale unfolded.

The two met in the summer of 2000, when each was an apprentice with Des Moines Metro Opera. They were brought together to perform an excerpt from Verdi's 'La Traviata,' 'where she's dying and I've come back to make amends,' Miller said. 'We sing a love duet as she dies in my arms.'

'We had to rehearse it a lot,' Mitina said, brown eyes twinkling.

'You can only cradle a beautiful woman in your arms so long before the sparks start to fly,' he said.

'They actually met in my studio,' said Laura Friesen, Virginia Opera's vocal coach, later that day during a rehearsal break. She was then a coach at Des Moines. 'Patrick was completely smitten immediately.'

It was their first experience onstage with a professional opera company.

For Mitina, it was also her first situation as the only non-native speaker. 'It was really difficult. I remember getting headaches.' She had moved to the United States from St. Petersburg, Russia, two years earlier  to study and to pursue an opera career. Miller grew up in Minnesota's Twin Cities.

They fell for each other fast but didn't want the others to know. 'We decided not to hold hands,' she said. In such tight quarters, gossip thrives.

She was attracted to 'his package altogether ' good manners, handsome, tall, kind, good voice ' beautiful, unusual timbre. And the fact that he was so into me.'

Aside from her talent and beauty, Miller said he 'sensed a depth of character. When we had time off, she wasn't interested in going to the mall or watching television. She was interested in the arts and meaningful issues in life,' he said. When summer ended, both wondered if their romance would last.

'I got reassured,' she said. 'He was calling me from pay phones every day from Italy. I was getting letters, too. Very romantic, three-page letters' ' much like the letter Tatiana writes to Eugene Onegin. 'It was wonderful,' she said, eyes gleaming.

She was studying at the Boston University Opera Institute. He was doing the same in Italy, then moved to Texas to apprentice with Austin Lyric Opera. 'That first year was tough,' he said.

They spoke often by phone. 'Being very, very poor, we couldn't fly to see each other every weekend,' he said. Miller turned down a second year in Austin to join her in Boston. From then on, they lived within a short walk of  each other ' first in Boston, then in Chicago. Mitina lucked out and got her green card a few months before 9/11/01. 

They began to build their resumes with roles with professional companies.

In August 2006, just before they moved to New York, they got engaged in Toronto ' at a sushi restaurant. (He hid the ring in the battery compartment of his camera.) They married Sept. 2 in St. Paul, Minn., in a chapel on campus at Northwestern College, one of the schools where his parents taught such subjects as speech, drama and theater history.

Three of the eight attendants were singers, but there was no singing at their wedding. 'We wanted them to just enjoy it,' said Mitina.  Instead, they had a string quartet that performed ' what else' ' opera music.

As the bridesmaids marched in, the quartet played a girls' chorus from 'Eugene Onegin.' 'It talks about girlfriends,' she said. Directly after, the couple spent three days on Lake Superior. Then, in late September, they headed to St. Petersburg, Russia, with Miller's family, for a wedding reception there, too.

Miller learned how Mitina has felt, as her extended family chattered to him in Russian  and he strained to understand. Fortunately for him, her mother is an English professor in St. Petersburg.

Mitina has been helping him with his Russian, the language they'll sing in for this production. In 'Eugene Onegin,' their characters are not in love, so they have to watch each other moon over someone else onstage every day. They aren't bothered; they know it's just pretending.

Nor does one get jealous when the other lands a juicy role. 'I would say we're more happy for the other one,' Mitina said. 'Every time I get something, Patrick is jumping up and down more than me.' They still haven't had 'the honeymoon.' Miller's parents gave them two weeks in the Canary Islands as a wedding present, and they were hoping to head there right after 'Onegin.' 'Then Veronica got a contract for five days later,' he said. At least she'll be working in New York, and he'll be there, too, but that's still no honeymoon. They've rescheduled their trip for October. Meanwhile, Miller said, 'this feels like a honeymoon.' Most singer couples are on the road a lot, and not to the same places. 'This is living a romantic dream: We get to be in a show together.'

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com

if you go What  Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin,' produced by Virginia Opera Where  Harrison Opera House, Norfolk When  Opens 8 p.m. Friday with more performances 2:30 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, 8 p.m. Feb. 15 and 2:30 p.m. Feb. 17 Tickets  $25 to $99 Call  (757) 623-1223 or (866) OPERAVA (673-7282); www.vaopera.org

What Happens in 'Eugene Onegin'

This tragic Russian tale is based on Alexander Pushkin's early 19th century novel-in-verse. The romantic, young Tatiana meets a handsome but aloof aristocrat named Eugene Onegin and falls in love. She writes him a love letter, the occasion of her great aria, but he rejects her. Her frivolous sister, Olga, is engaged to a poet, Lensky, who challenges Onegin to a duel after he flirts with Olga at a ball. They shoot; Lensky dies. Years later, Onegin returns to St. Petersburg to discover Tatiana is now a beautiful woman wed to a prince. He realizes he is mad for her, but it is too late. The opera ends as she tells him she will not leave her family for him ' and he regrets his folly.