Pique Dame by Tchaikovsky, P. I., Do. 03 Apr. 2025, Ab (2025/2025), Unter der Regie von Richard Jones, Dirigat Valentin Uryupin, Teatro Regio, Turin, Italien

Tchaikovsky considered The Queen of Spades to be his best work ever. Composed in 1890 in a flurry of inspiration, the opera is set to the libretto written by his brother, based on a novella by the celebrated Russian poet Pushkin. The story unfolds in St. Petersburg at the end of the seventeen hundreds. Hermann, the lead character, hears that an old countess knows of an infallible method for winning at cards. His obsession with gambling leads him to seduce her granddaughter, Liza, in an effort to learn the secret. The composer shows all his masterly skill in drawing out the sense of imminent tragedy, conveyed in arias of tremendous intensity and pain, permeating the scene with a nostalgia for the past that pays constant tribute to Mozart’s rococo style, which Tchaikovsky greatly admired. In this production by Richard Jones for the Welsh National Opera, the story is brought forward to early twentieth-century Russia, where relics of the country’s grand imperial past appear in the midst of the post-revolutionary chaos. In this setting, Hermann’s maniacal hallucinations take on grotesque turns, rendered on stage in the most surprising way. After a brilliant debut at the Teatro Regio in 2023 with Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, maestro Valentin Urypin returns to conduct the Teatro Regio orchestra and chorus and a group of soloists specialised in late nineteenth-century Russian repertoire. And with them returns the ever-glorious Jennifer Larmore.