Lyric Opera 2019-2020 Issue 9 The Queen of Spades

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 30 The design of the raucous gambling house embodies Gherman’s skewed state of mind, as Tomsky consoles the despondent Yeletsky, lewdly entertains the men, and leads the taunting of the crazed Gherman – high on no sleep and still in pyjamas – onto an oversized card table. At first, it appears that Gherman has indeed learned the infamous secret of the three cards; he bets all his money on the turn of the first card, a three, and wins, to everyone’s amazement. The same happens with the second card, a seven. The superstitious men surrounding him suspect foul play. Gherman is pumped and launches into a philosophical rant about life being a game, seizing fortune in the moment, and cursing fate; for him, the moment of feeling most alive is between the bet and revealing the card. The slighted Prince Yeletsky steps in to the high-stakes card game, which takes the place of a conventional duel. Gherman is confident he will win. But in a twist of fate, he bets all his winnings on the wrong third card, an ace. Instead, the Queen of Spades is dealt and Gherman, to his horror, loses everything. In Pushkin’s story, as an afterword, Gherman ends up in a mental hospital, endlessly mumbling the numbers of the three cards. In Tchaikovsky’s opera, however, the scene careers towards its intensely dramatic conclusion as the desperate antihero Gherman turns a weapon on himself. With his dying words he begs forgiveness and envisions Lisa beckoning him to heaven. In Romantic thinking, passionate love, feelings of foreboding, and gambling were all seen on occasion as kinds of possession; creativity itself was even viewed as a form of madness. These themes undoubtedly resonated with Tchaikovsky’s genius as he transmuted Pushkin’s short story into an opera of extraordinary power at a prolific but tormented time in his own life. This visually striking production brings these same themes to twenty-first-century audiences. It invites us to revel in Tchaikovsky’s riveting storytelling and the power of music, text, movement, and the visual arts – the combination of expressive forms that together make this art form so thrilling. Benjamin Davis’s biography appears on pg. 23. The Summer Garden in St. Petersburg, where Lisa and the Countess might have walked. Gherman (Vladimir Galouzine) confronts Lisa (Katarina Dalayman): The Queen of Spades at Lyric, 2000|01 season. Dan Rest Gherman (right) exhorts the other gamblers to seize the day in the opera’s final scene, Lyric, 2000|01. Dan Rest