|
Back
The ravings of a “creative” director Vienna
Staatsoper
06/21/2025 - & June 24, 27, 30*, 2025
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Queen of Spades, Opus 68
Yusif Eyvazov (Gherman), Andrea Giovannini (Chekalinsky), Ivo Stanchev (Sourin), Alexey Markov (Count Tomsky, Pluto), Boris Pinkhasovich (Prince Yeletsky), Elena Zaremba (Countess), Anna Netrebko (Lisa), Elena Maximova (Paulina, Daphnis), Maria Nazarova (Masha), Stephanie Maitland (Governess), Hand Peter Kammerer (Major‑domo), Laura Wilde (Chloë), Hiroshi Amako (Chaplitsky), Dan Paul Dumitrescu (Narumov)
Chor der Wiener Staatsoper, Martin Schebesta (chorus master), Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Timur Zangiev (conductor).
Vera Nemirova (stage director), Johannes Leiacker (sets), Marie‑Luise Strandt (costumes), Jennifer Tipton (lights)
Y. Eyvazov, A. Netrebko (© Wiener Staatsoper/Michael Pöhn)
Based on Pushkin’s novella, Tchaikovsky’s opera has variously been staged as a gothic thriller; as the romantic tale of a naive and confused girl seduced by a scoundrel; or as one man’s obsession. German-Bulgarian director Vera Nemirova chose the third option, justifying it by contextualizing it with a destitute man’s societal deprivation, where wealth and poverty coexist. Alas, Nemirova’s misguided vision unnecessarily weakened a work of great potential power.
The opera is set during Catherine the Great’s reign (1762-1796). As it was commissioned by Prince Ivan Alexandrovitch Vsevolojsky (1835‑1909), Director of the Imperial Theatres and a conservative and an ardent Francophile, the intent was to set music to an iconic Russian novella while showing the Motherland at its most opulent and respecting Catherine. Alas, Nemirova chose to set the action during a vague, undetermined period, a hybrid of 50s Communist Russia and 90s Yeltsin‑era, when corruption was the norm. This unfortunate mixing of epochs only accentuates ugliness and confusion, bringing nothing fresh to the opera’s drama.
Moreover, with the pretext of the action set in a period of austerity, Johannes Leiacker’s drab sets serve for all the scenes. The opera is meant to open in Saint Petersburg’s magnificent Summer Garden, but instead we’re in the Countess’ palace, a dilapidated mansion seemingly expropriated by the Revolution, now serving as an orphanage. Implausibly, the Countess and her granddaughter Lisa are allowed to live there, behaving like nobles rather than comrades. Why army officers (including Herman) meet in an orphanage is never revealed.
As historical context matters in this work, it’s hard to understand how the old Countess learned her secret method to win at cards. In both the novella and the opera, the alleged source is the Comte de Saint‑Germain (1691 or 1712‑1784), a self‑invented Count and scoundrel of dubious origin. The evocation of this character, neither French nor a nobleman, hints at the falsehood of the Countess’s magical formula at cards. Chances are that his secret was as apocryphal as he was. Such nonsense had little room under communism, even as idle gossip. On the other hand, it would have been plausible under Yeltsin, where le Comte de Saint‑Germain would have been right at home.
Act II opens to a masked ball, another pretext (in the actual libretto, that is) to show Imperial Russia at its most glamorous. However, Nemirova chose to situate the ball in a seedy nightclub, which somehow is in the orphanage, which in turn is in the Countess’ palace. A coterie of dubious businessmen stand behind numerous interchangeable blondes, dressed identically. They are either their wives, or prostitutes; it’s never revealed which. The grandiose Greek mythology-inspired divertissement, with Daphnis, Chloë and Pluto is transformed into a vulgar show with drag queens (which held little appeal in Stalin or Yeltsin’s Russia). Even Herman’s army mates are part of the show for they obviously have dubious sexual proclivities according to the “creative” director. How this lurid show relates to the plot is another Nemirova mystery.
In the second scene of Act II, Herman uses the key Lisa had given him for a tryst to surprise the Countess in order to obtain her secret. In an innovation that surpasses the most depraved imagination, the old Countess plays along and seemingly wants sexual intercourse in return for her secret. Herman obliges, and the old woman dies from fright – or is it sexual passion? This is without a doubt the most deranged and outrageous distortion of this opera I’ve ever seen.
The one reasonable modification by Nemirova was to set the opening of Act III at the Countess’s funeral rather than at Herman’s room in the army barracks. In the libretto, the ghost of the old Countess appears to him in a dream, revealing her three secret cards (three, seven and ace), on the condition that Herman agrees to marry, thereby saving the fallen Lisa.
In the following scene, Lisa awaits Herman by the Winter Canal on the Neva. Somehow Nemirova places the Canal inside the Countess’s palace. When Herman babbles about the three cards and grabs her purse to find money to gamble, Lisa realises all is lost and commits suicide. In lieu of jumping off Nemirova’s interior canal, Lisa disappears into a crowd of umbrella-carrying passersby. This image is more evocative of Dickens than Stalin or Yeltsin‑era Russia, but the director undoubtedly thinks the more the merrier! One of her lurid images might stick.
In the opera’s finale, Herman visits a gambling house, the same dive at the Countess’s palace. Herman places a huge bet and wins by betting on the three. A second bet on the seven wins again. With all his winnings, he places a third bet on the ace, but finds himself holding the “queen of spades” instead. When he sees the vengeful ghost of the Countess laughing at him, he begs for Lisa and Yeletsky’s forgiveness and shoots himself.
The role of Herman is sometimes called “the Russian Otello” due to the intensity required. Yusif Eyvazov is admired for his huge voice, but is often ineffective in Italian roles. He was more convincing here, possibly for linguistic reasons and possibly as it’s a strange role that can be viewed from several different angles. Ideally, Herman is nuanced, charming and seductive, then pensive and eventually obsessed, and finally mad. In this staging, he’s weird (if not obsessive) from the start, a valid viewpoint. However, it is hard to see how Lisa falls for him. Vocally, as usual he sang forte and fortissimo, which may work given the obsessive character he is assigned. His Act III aria, "Chto nasha zhizn? Igra!," where he finds that life is just a card game, was his most intense and best interpreted.
Anna Netrebko was the opera’s main attraction, and the reason for the huge number of foreigners in the audience. Several were fervent fans supporting their Russian idol, who was misguidedly banned from some major opera houses for gratuitous political reasons. Vocally, she was the best she’s sounded in a long time, her voice at its most glorious, with a warm and appealing timbre, soaring high notes and her signature pianissimi. Gone was the substantial darkening of the voice noticed in La forza del destino in Milan and especially in Adriana Lecouvreur in Paris. Her Act III aria “Uzh polnoch blizitsya... Akh! istomilas ya gorem” was the most beautifully memorable moment of the evening.
Russian-Austrian baritone Boris Pinkhasovich was a dignified Prince Yeletsky, acting the role as a true nobleman. After a glorious interpretation of his Act II aria “Ya vas lyublyu”, he remained poised after being rejected by Lisa. Even in the final scene, he remained dignified confronting Herman, who’d caused the end of his engagement to Lisa (and unbeknownst to him, her suicide). Admired last season as Ford in Falstaff in Vienna, dignified roles suit this excellent baritone.
Russian mezzo Elena Zaremba was far too young and pretty to be the old Countess, a role typically relegated to semi‑retired singers with the cachet to conjure their former glory. For once, here’s a performer in her prime who can actually sing rather than merely act her lines. Moreover, this Russian mezzo is fluent in French, as were Russian aristocrats, and hence her Act II aria “Je crains de lui parler la nuit” was both beautifully rendered and fluidly French.
Not surprisingly, the Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper sounded as glorious as ever. Young Russian conductor Timur Zangiev has an undeniable affinity for Tchaikovsky and for opera in general. He deftly revealed The Queen of Spades’ sombre colours, undeniably Tchaikovsky’s darkest operatic composition. With the exception of the Daphnis and Chleë divertissement, even the relatively joyful moments in this opera are tainted with melancholy. At its most dramatic moments, such as Herman’s entry into the Countess room and Lisa’s suicide, the intensity was almost unbearable.
The secondary roles were well performed and mostly by native Russian speakers. Had it not been for the ugly sets and Nemirova’s uglier ideas, this would have been a truly glorious performance.
The polite Viennese public and the many Netrebko fans were ecstatic to see their hero, happily indifferent to Nemirova’s atrocious staging. Fortunately, the public’s love for Netrebko pacified the audience, with no one demanding the director’s head.
Ossama el Naggar
|
