Three seven ace

Today is the 115th anniversary of the premiere of Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker. While I've no Nutcracker plans for this year, last Friday night, while thousands of Washingtonians were attending one of the area's dozens of Nutcracker performances this holiday season, I was attending another Tchaikovsky performance. This performance, while no less magical, was much darker and much longer: we went to see Queen of Spades.

Tchaikovsky wrote several operas, but only Queen of Spades (a/k/a Pique Dame) and Eugene Onegin have any real name recognition. Name recognition is about all either of them have, though, since they are not on the regular rotation, at least in this country, and people don't know the melodies. I was preparing an Eugene Onegin right before I moved to D.C. several years ago and had to withdraw from the production before staging, but until Friday, I had never actually seen a Tchaikovsky opera live.

This particular opera seemed almost Wagnerian to me in terms of its story line and development, not to mention the four hour length! Tchaikovsky's younger brother Modest served as librettist for this work, and he based his words on a short story by famed Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin. It's the story of a common young man in love with a beautiful young woman who is engaged to be married to a prince. The woman is the granddaughter of an elderly countess called "the queen of spades," who, in her youth, had the secret formula to success in gambling with cards; the young man decides that he also wants the secret to the cards, and gambling becomes his new, overriding obsession. And, in the great tradition of opera, by the end of the show, everybody dies.

The show was performed by the traveling company of the Mariinsky Theater from St. Petersburg, Russia, known in the United States as the Kirov Opera. As Tchaikovsky premiered this work at the Mariinsky in December 1890, it seemed particularly appropriate to watch this opera sung by these Russians.

Having just seen this company sing Otello two nights previous, I saw a lot of the same people in the casts. The principals were all different, but the supporting roles shared many of the same singers. The principals were all very solid singers. The Kirov, however, still operates in the older operatic system where they cast specific voices for parts, not specific singer/actors for parts, as is being done in modern opera in America.

It was this casting technique that caused the problems for me in watching this opera and kept me from fully engaging in the drama. I simply didn't buy the idea of the actors singing Herman and Lisa as young people in love, and thus the show lost credibility. Herman (Vladimir Galouzine) was clearly well into middle age and (while I would never presume to guess the age of a lady!) Lisa (Mlada Khudoley) seemed more matronly to me than innocent, impetuous young maiden. Now, both sang well, but I was sitting on the front row center of the house, so I had to have not only a splendid aural experience, but a splendid visual one, as well.

The sets were very spare, and there was an annoying use of "dancing curtains." It started with two parallel curtains, one black, one white, down on the main curtain line. Once both had parted, though, we saw several other curtains in various locations on stage, including a series that bisected the stage diagonally. Throughout the show, they used these curtains to create different "rooms" and spaces during the action, and some of the curtains were even rigged to move in circular patterns. It was a unique and interesting idea, but they overused the concept and it became quite tiresome by the end of the opera.

Much as in Otello, I had difficulty determining the era of the adjusted story. Pushkin's play was set in the early mid-19th century, but the librettist placed the story in the era of Catherine the Great (late 18th). I don't know where this show was. The costumes seemed to me a mixture of 19th century clothing, but with the men particularly in late 19th. Then we had props—as in Otello—from the present day to confuse matters more. For example, the old countess (Irina Bogacheva), who was so severely done up in black and white age makeup as to look like the caricature of a ghost, wore early 19th century dresses, yet was being wheeled around the stage in a brand new, contemporary wheelchair. Then, during the masquerade ball, when the group was visited by Catherine the Great, we saw a projected silhouette of the empress on the backdrop, but the image looked just like the century-later British empress Victoria.

So, it was in the little things that we found distraction in the production.

Some of the singing was quite fine. I particularly enjoyed the love aria of Yeletsky (Alexander Gergalov). Herman (Vladimir Galouzine) was a very powerful and dramatic singer, and I can see him in any number of other major roles because of his excellent portrayal of a man descending into insanity. It kind of pointed out a Russian staging matter with which I disagree, though, in that their main male characters are very "one note." Wednesday, Otello was "angry" and Friday, Herman was "insane." The characters lack dimension, and that makes it very hard for the audiences to relate to and "like" those characters.

The stage director also missed a couple of good opportunities to advance the drama. He never really highlighted Lisa during her moments on stage, and it was well into the opera before I figured out who the main female character was. In her group scenes, she faded into the crowd; she was never the "star." Then, at the end of the opera, when she realizes that her Herman is more interested in cards and money than her, she's supposed to jump into the river in her despair, but here, she just calmly walked down the embankment. Had I not read the synopsis in the program, I'd not have known that she was committing suicide then. Perhaps she needed a trampoline backstage like Tosca has.

So, Kirov's Queen of Spades definitely gave us an interesting evening. The simple Pushkin story has become a complex opera, and it's an opera that will require a few more viewings to fully understand and appreciate. This production probably is not the best vehicle for learning and appreciating the opera, though. There are limitations that a touring company has, and the way the company addressed those limitations creates dramatic challenges of its own. I did enjoy the evening, though, and it was nice hearing this opera for the first time.