Reviews 2002
Reviews 2002
✭✭✭✭✭
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, directed by Annilese Miskimmon
Canadian Opera Company, Hummingbird Centre, Toronto
September 26-October 11, 2002
"A Winning Hand"
The Canadian Opera Company brings us Tchaikovsky's eerie opera "The Queen of Spades" in a production that is simply brilliant. Created by Richard Jones for the Welsh National Opera in 2000, the production won raves and it is easy to see why. Revived here by Annilese Miskimmon, it strips away any aura of romanticism or sentimentality from the work to reveal it a powerful psychological study of obsession and madness.
Tchaikovsky's opera premiered in 1890, the same year as his ballet "The Sleeping Beauty". While both depict quests for the sake of love, there is no happy ending in the opera. Herman, a poor soldier, has had to look on while the aristocrats in the army gambled away fortunes at cards. He has fallen in love with Lisa, a girl has seen in St. Petersburg, but is heartbroken to learn that she is already engaged to Prince Yeletsky. When Herman discovers that she is the granddaughter of a famous Countess who is said to hold the secret of winning at cards, both of his obsessions become one. If he can persuade the Countess to tell him the secret, he will have enough money to be worthy of Lisa. The Countess's death before revealing the secret of the three cards pushes the desperate Herman over the brink so that he does not even recognize that Lisa has thrown over the Yeletsky for his sake. The opera ends in tragedy for both of them.
Tchaikovsky's brother Modest fashioned the libretto from a story by Alexander Pushkin written in 1834. Modest added Herman's passion for Lisa to Pushkin's story and made it precede his obsession with the secret of the cards. This makes the opera dynamic and gives it depth by weaving three themes together--love, chance and death. Modest makes Herman see his life as a nightmare and expands the gambling metaphor in Herman's exclamation, "What is our life? A game!"
Jones's intelligent, incisive production brings out all of this largely through very simple means. He has had designer John Macfarlane move the action forward from the time of Catherine the Great to a dowdy post-Revolutionary Russia. In this way he broadens the sense of desperation to that of society in general. Lisa and the Countess in their pastel dresses are set apart from the palette of greys of the rest, as if they represented hope for a new life. The design and Michael Spray's lighting (after Jennifer Tipton) suits the expressionist style Jones adopts reminiscent of Fritz Lang's silent films and emphasizing psychology over the supernatural. The stylized blocking, movements and gestures he assigns the actors not only give the work a satirical edge, especially regarding the doddering Countess, but they also heighten the sense of unreality. This unreality in turn makes us feel as if what we see actually is Herman's nightmare and underscores the theatricality of the opera. Herman enters Lisa's room not by a door but its fourth wall and at the end Herman's friend Count Tomsky gives the set a pushes sending it gliding backwards into darkness.
Jones keeps the Countess before our eyes even in scenes where she does not herself appear through paintings or people dressed in her clothes. Her omnipresence correlates with the idea of Fate in the work. Jones makes us see that the Countess's arid life without love is also a kind of death, made clear by substituting a skeleton for the traditional ghost in Act 3. Even the pastoral interlude in Act 2, here performed as a puppet play, becomes in Jones's hands not merely an allegory of the action but the story of the Countess's life. In Jones's detailed approach, as recreated by Miskimmon, every element of the production works to develop the ideas inherent in the opera.
The COC has fielded an excellent cast headed by Russian tenor Vadim Zaplechny as Herman in his most impressive appearance yet with the company. He sings with a ringing tone laden with sadness. In a riveting performance he presents us first with Herman as a kind of innocent weakling and brings out every painful nuance of Herman's gradual descent from obsession to madness, Herman paradoxically gaining in strength the further he slips into delusion. As Lisa, Armenian soprano Hasmik Papian sings with a very powerful voice and brings a complex mixture of emotions to the part making Lisa's desperation in the aria before her suicide particularly disturbing. Canadian mezzo Judith Forst is superb as the Countess, able to tread the fine line between caricature and character. Even while we are ready to deride the Countess for her decrepitude, Forst's sensitive singing brings out her humanity.
Russian baritone Igor Morozov makes an excellent Prince Yeletsky especially fine in the Prince's aria of Act 2 imploring Lisa to recognize his love for her. Baritone John Fanning makes Count Tomsky into a cynical, devil-may-care fellow. His account of Countess's history in Act 1 brings a mocking tone to the narration even as it draws us in. Hungarian mezzo Viktoria Vizin, as Lisa's companion Pauline, displays a beautiful, rich voice and subtle characterization in her two songs in Act 1 and as the Shepherd in Act 2. Peter Collins and Alvin Crawford as the cynical officers Tchekalinsky and Sourin and Sonia Gosse and Frédérique Vézina as the Governess and Maid/Chloë each make fine contributions.
Conductor Richard Bradshaw's brisk tempi dusted off the cobwebs to reveal the sinewy beauty of the score that relates it forward to the 20th-century instead of backwards to the 19th. The orchestra, sounding glorious, clearly revelled in the music's plangent sonorities and vital rhythms.
This is a revelatory production. After seeing it I will find it hard to go back to a traditional decorative production with its 18th-century costumes and real ghost. To approach the action as psychological rather than supernatural and see it as critique of society is exactly what Pushkin did in the original story. The post-Revolutionary setting makes Herman's dream of wealth and freedom seem more hopeless. With such a fine direction, conduction, singing, acting and design in one production, the COC plays a winning hand.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Vadim Zaplechny as Herman. ©2002 COC.
2002-10-06
The Queen of Spades