Royal Opera (live broadcast), 22/01/2019
Tchaikovsky : The Queen of Spades
Royal Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Sir Antonio Pappano
To present a fair picture of this production, the title should rather have been "The Making of The Queen of Spades", because this was absolutely not, save in a few, brief moments, a production of the opera as it appears on paper, and to our ears. There was no manipulation of the score - what you heard was pretty much exactly as Tchaikovsky intended. What you saw? That was an entirely different kettle of fish.
Having the composer feature in the production of his opera is not a completely new concept. Even I've seen a couple of examples; Rossini hovering around the edges of La donna del lago, or Wagner centre-stage for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. However, Stefan Herheim has made Tchaikovsky the raison d'être of this production, because, put very broadly, what we are seeing is the process of creation of The Queen of Spades. You may have heard authors talk of their characters getting away from them, and imposing a certain direction on the text. Something similar happens here, in that every so often the characters will take over for a little while. Also, everyone on stage, from the 30-odd Tchaikovsky clones of the male chorus to the principals, is a reflection in some way or other of Tchaikovsky and his subconscious. Everyone wears, as part of their costume, the same long, white, collared shirt and dark-red (or maybe it was black) tie. Lisa appears for the first time (and for the last time) as an Angel of Death, with gleaming black wings. Hermann appears for the first time as a bit of rough trade the composer has picked up somewhere, and throughout the performance, the Tchaikovsky figure can be seen conducting, or playing the piano, or writing out the score, while pages of the score are used as letters, playing cards, money, music, or indications to the character where to go next, whether it be vocally or dramatically.
Throughout the evening, there are references to Tchaikovsky's past, and premonitions of his future. A glass of water is an omnipresent symbol. There are two portraits of the Countess visible during the evening. One of them, which I never got a good look at, appeared to be a fairly colourful representation of a woman in an 18th Century paniered dress, but the other, which was present when Tomsky sings his ballad in the first act, and again through the whole Hermann/Countess scene, and the barracks scene, is of a dark-haired woman in late 19th Century black dress, holding what might have been some letters in her hands. Was this a reference to Nadezhda von Meck, whose thirteen-year patronage of Tchaikovsky had ended abruptly just two months before the premiere of The Queen of Spades? Herheim's production is stuffed full of such material, and I probably missed a few things, having only an average knowledge of the material.
Where the complications really arose were with the Tchaikovsky figure himself, because Herheim did not simply put a double on stage and set him loose amidst the operatic characters. Instead, he conflated his "Tchaikovsky" with the character of Prince Yeletsky; Yeletsky, who is a minor character but always sung by a major baritone for the simple reason that Tchaikovsky gives him one of his loveliest arias, Yeletsky who is a character invented by Tchaikovsky, inserted into his brother's libretto, non-existent in the original Pushkin. So when Lisa, for example, turns to this figure, we're not quite sure whether she's talking to Yeletsky, or to Tchaikovsky, or, indeed, which of the two men is responding to her. Characters addressing themselves to someone other than would be indicated by the libretto are a frequent feature of this production - most of the time it's to the Tchaikovsky/Yeletsky figure that this occurs, but not always. Sometimes it's puzzling, sometimes it works.
For me, the one place where this production really gelled, was in the opening two scenes of the second half. (The intermission was placed after Act 2, Scene 1, the ball scene, so we began the second half with the Hermann/Countess confrontation). First of all, the crowd of female attendants around the Countess at the start of that scene was a terrifying collection of black crows, hovering and flittering menacingly around the frail, white figure of the Countess. Then there was the Grétry aria; for the second half, after the Countess has chased away the attendants, Tchaikovsky comes forward, startling her at first, but then reassuring her with old-fashioned gallantry, and they dance a few steps gently as she repeats the aria, before he leads her to the chair to let her drift off into sleep. It's an extraordinarily touching moment, the composer at one with his creation, sharing a love of an age gone by.
There are a lot of very striking, very strong ideas in this production, and I cannot just write it off as another case of Regietheater in the nth degree (although that's exactly what it is, and I've rarely seen a more comprehensive example). However, neither is it The Queen of Spades, and I feel a little sorry for anyone coming to this opera for the first time via this production. It certainly required a serious degree of prior information to find your way around its convolutions. It's a handsomely designed production, quite monochromatic, but effectively so, with costumes that manage to be both simple and splendid at the same time, and.a set that could convert from a quite realistic period living room to a more fantastical mirrored ballroom. There's a large, elaborate, crystal chandelier hanging over the centre of the stage, and one superb effect using that was in the barracks scene, when it starts swinging from side to side, smoke trailing gently from it, like a giant censer, while the off-stage chorus sings the funeral hymns for the dead Countess. That was an image that will stay with me for a long time.
So what of the evening musically? It would have been nice to report a faultless plateau, but that would be overstating the case. First of all, it has to be said that Vladimir Stoyanov, as Tchaikovsky/Yeletsky, turned in a tremendous performance dramatically. He was on stage almost all of the time, with an immensely complicated, and all-encompassing part to play, and his singing demonstrated a good, rounded baritone voice. Unfortunately, through no fault of his own, the nature of his personage meant that the Yeletsky side of it was rather undermined, and it was impossible to get a real feel for Yeletsky's relationship with Lisa - or rather, his attempt to forge a relationship - because Tchaikovsky's relationship with his character, both the one he was addressing, and the one he was playing, was overwriting anything else. In short, that famous aria became a bit anodyne.
Alexanders Antonenko was supposed to play Hermann, but local bad weather got the better of him and he was replaced at short notice by Sergey Polyakov, who has already replaced Antonenko once in this run. The house notified us that Polyakov too had been suffering from a throat infection, and indeed, his first act was a little shaky, with his voice all but fading out towards the end of the big love duet that concludes Act 1. However, the start of Act 2, followed by the interval, gave him some time to recover (Hermann doesn't sing much in Act 2.i, the only time in the opera that character really gets a breather), and for the rest of the evening he delivered a steady, sturdy performance, and he had a creepily effective insane giggle when required.
I've expressed my reservations about Eva-Maria Westbroek before. She can be very good, she's a better than fair actress, and sometimes, when the alchemy is right, she can be absolutely stupendous. Last year's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District comes to mind. This was not one of those evenings. She was fair up until her last scene, and then some sort of fatigue set in, and she was having noticeable pitch problems from about half way through the aria right through to the end. Again, I felt that the production demanded she play multiple roles, or at least hint at them, which detracted from her ability to play Lisa.
Felicity Palmer was a superb Countess. She always has been, since she's always been an excellent actress, but at almost 75, she now actually has the age of the part, and with her voice that is still clear and strong, you get a magnificent impression of an indomitable spirit in a frail frame, particularly as she was performing with what looked very much like a cast on her right wrist or forearm. Also on outstanding form was the chorus, so important in most Tchaikovsky operas, and delivering the goods here at every turn. Particularly effective, as mentioned before, the chorus of female attendants with their unsettling fawning, and then the final hymn from the men, very slow and very hushed, and quite heart-breaking. Pappano and the ROH orchestra gave this rich, evocative score their all, beautifully detailed, with the harp coming through vividly, glowing winds and wonderful string tone. The introduction to Act 2.ii was superbly delivered, the stuttering figure in the violas and sighing upper strings winding up the tension beautifully.
As mentioned, there is much that is very interesting about this production, but also much that distracts from the music, and that also, I think, distracts the singers from the music. On the other hand, they will be fully aware that they are not exactly playing a 'normal' (for whatever value that term has) Queen of Spades, and Stoyanov, in particular, really produces an astonishing tour de force of a performance. Musically, the central couple is not all one could wish for, which does detract from the overall picture, but there are compensations - Felicity Palmer, truly unmissable, and the chorus and orchestra. However, it's certainly not a production for beginners. In the cinema, beside me tonight, a couple to whom this opera was clearly completely new, debating during the interval, came to the conclusion that Tchaikovsky should have stuck to ballet. Proof that the eye trumps the ear, at least for the newcomer, and that Herheim's production leaves the wrong kind of impression.
[Next : 24th January]
Royal Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Sir Antonio Pappano
To present a fair picture of this production, the title should rather have been "The Making of The Queen of Spades", because this was absolutely not, save in a few, brief moments, a production of the opera as it appears on paper, and to our ears. There was no manipulation of the score - what you heard was pretty much exactly as Tchaikovsky intended. What you saw? That was an entirely different kettle of fish.
Having the composer feature in the production of his opera is not a completely new concept. Even I've seen a couple of examples; Rossini hovering around the edges of La donna del lago, or Wagner centre-stage for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. However, Stefan Herheim has made Tchaikovsky the raison d'être of this production, because, put very broadly, what we are seeing is the process of creation of The Queen of Spades. You may have heard authors talk of their characters getting away from them, and imposing a certain direction on the text. Something similar happens here, in that every so often the characters will take over for a little while. Also, everyone on stage, from the 30-odd Tchaikovsky clones of the male chorus to the principals, is a reflection in some way or other of Tchaikovsky and his subconscious. Everyone wears, as part of their costume, the same long, white, collared shirt and dark-red (or maybe it was black) tie. Lisa appears for the first time (and for the last time) as an Angel of Death, with gleaming black wings. Hermann appears for the first time as a bit of rough trade the composer has picked up somewhere, and throughout the performance, the Tchaikovsky figure can be seen conducting, or playing the piano, or writing out the score, while pages of the score are used as letters, playing cards, money, music, or indications to the character where to go next, whether it be vocally or dramatically.
Throughout the evening, there are references to Tchaikovsky's past, and premonitions of his future. A glass of water is an omnipresent symbol. There are two portraits of the Countess visible during the evening. One of them, which I never got a good look at, appeared to be a fairly colourful representation of a woman in an 18th Century paniered dress, but the other, which was present when Tomsky sings his ballad in the first act, and again through the whole Hermann/Countess scene, and the barracks scene, is of a dark-haired woman in late 19th Century black dress, holding what might have been some letters in her hands. Was this a reference to Nadezhda von Meck, whose thirteen-year patronage of Tchaikovsky had ended abruptly just two months before the premiere of The Queen of Spades? Herheim's production is stuffed full of such material, and I probably missed a few things, having only an average knowledge of the material.
Where the complications really arose were with the Tchaikovsky figure himself, because Herheim did not simply put a double on stage and set him loose amidst the operatic characters. Instead, he conflated his "Tchaikovsky" with the character of Prince Yeletsky; Yeletsky, who is a minor character but always sung by a major baritone for the simple reason that Tchaikovsky gives him one of his loveliest arias, Yeletsky who is a character invented by Tchaikovsky, inserted into his brother's libretto, non-existent in the original Pushkin. So when Lisa, for example, turns to this figure, we're not quite sure whether she's talking to Yeletsky, or to Tchaikovsky, or, indeed, which of the two men is responding to her. Characters addressing themselves to someone other than would be indicated by the libretto are a frequent feature of this production - most of the time it's to the Tchaikovsky/Yeletsky figure that this occurs, but not always. Sometimes it's puzzling, sometimes it works.
For me, the one place where this production really gelled, was in the opening two scenes of the second half. (The intermission was placed after Act 2, Scene 1, the ball scene, so we began the second half with the Hermann/Countess confrontation). First of all, the crowd of female attendants around the Countess at the start of that scene was a terrifying collection of black crows, hovering and flittering menacingly around the frail, white figure of the Countess. Then there was the Grétry aria; for the second half, after the Countess has chased away the attendants, Tchaikovsky comes forward, startling her at first, but then reassuring her with old-fashioned gallantry, and they dance a few steps gently as she repeats the aria, before he leads her to the chair to let her drift off into sleep. It's an extraordinarily touching moment, the composer at one with his creation, sharing a love of an age gone by.
There are a lot of very striking, very strong ideas in this production, and I cannot just write it off as another case of Regietheater in the nth degree (although that's exactly what it is, and I've rarely seen a more comprehensive example). However, neither is it The Queen of Spades, and I feel a little sorry for anyone coming to this opera for the first time via this production. It certainly required a serious degree of prior information to find your way around its convolutions. It's a handsomely designed production, quite monochromatic, but effectively so, with costumes that manage to be both simple and splendid at the same time, and.a set that could convert from a quite realistic period living room to a more fantastical mirrored ballroom. There's a large, elaborate, crystal chandelier hanging over the centre of the stage, and one superb effect using that was in the barracks scene, when it starts swinging from side to side, smoke trailing gently from it, like a giant censer, while the off-stage chorus sings the funeral hymns for the dead Countess. That was an image that will stay with me for a long time.
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| The Queen of Spades, Royal Opera House (© Catherine Ashmore, 2019) |
Alexanders Antonenko was supposed to play Hermann, but local bad weather got the better of him and he was replaced at short notice by Sergey Polyakov, who has already replaced Antonenko once in this run. The house notified us that Polyakov too had been suffering from a throat infection, and indeed, his first act was a little shaky, with his voice all but fading out towards the end of the big love duet that concludes Act 1. However, the start of Act 2, followed by the interval, gave him some time to recover (Hermann doesn't sing much in Act 2.i, the only time in the opera that character really gets a breather), and for the rest of the evening he delivered a steady, sturdy performance, and he had a creepily effective insane giggle when required.
I've expressed my reservations about Eva-Maria Westbroek before. She can be very good, she's a better than fair actress, and sometimes, when the alchemy is right, she can be absolutely stupendous. Last year's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District comes to mind. This was not one of those evenings. She was fair up until her last scene, and then some sort of fatigue set in, and she was having noticeable pitch problems from about half way through the aria right through to the end. Again, I felt that the production demanded she play multiple roles, or at least hint at them, which detracted from her ability to play Lisa.
Felicity Palmer was a superb Countess. She always has been, since she's always been an excellent actress, but at almost 75, she now actually has the age of the part, and with her voice that is still clear and strong, you get a magnificent impression of an indomitable spirit in a frail frame, particularly as she was performing with what looked very much like a cast on her right wrist or forearm. Also on outstanding form was the chorus, so important in most Tchaikovsky operas, and delivering the goods here at every turn. Particularly effective, as mentioned before, the chorus of female attendants with their unsettling fawning, and then the final hymn from the men, very slow and very hushed, and quite heart-breaking. Pappano and the ROH orchestra gave this rich, evocative score their all, beautifully detailed, with the harp coming through vividly, glowing winds and wonderful string tone. The introduction to Act 2.ii was superbly delivered, the stuttering figure in the violas and sighing upper strings winding up the tension beautifully.
As mentioned, there is much that is very interesting about this production, but also much that distracts from the music, and that also, I think, distracts the singers from the music. On the other hand, they will be fully aware that they are not exactly playing a 'normal' (for whatever value that term has) Queen of Spades, and Stoyanov, in particular, really produces an astonishing tour de force of a performance. Musically, the central couple is not all one could wish for, which does detract from the overall picture, but there are compensations - Felicity Palmer, truly unmissable, and the chorus and orchestra. However, it's certainly not a production for beginners. In the cinema, beside me tonight, a couple to whom this opera was clearly completely new, debating during the interval, came to the conclusion that Tchaikovsky should have stuck to ballet. Proof that the eye trumps the ear, at least for the newcomer, and that Herheim's production leaves the wrong kind of impression.
[Next : 24th January]