On 27 May a premiere of The Queen of Spades opens the XXIII Stars of the White Nights festival, to be held under the aegis of Tchaikovsky marking one hundred and seventy-five years since the great Russian composer’s birth.
This will be the one-thousand-three-hundred-and-fourth performance at the Mariinsky Theatre. The opera’s world premiere took place on 7 (19, Old Style) December 1890 and was conducted by Eduard Nápravník.
The opera was created for the Mariinsky Theatre on the initiative of the Director of the Imperial Theatres Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky. The libretto was written by Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The composer began work on The Queen of Spades in Florence in the winter of 1890 and completed his clavier score of the opera in a fantastically short period – just forty-four days.
“I wrote the opera with self-abandonment and enjoyment...” Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother, “either I am terribly and unforgivably wrong or The Queen of Spades is truly my chef-d’oeuvre. In some parts – for example the fourth scene – I feel such fear, horror and amazement that is it impossible for the audience not to feel the same things, albeit partially.”
The Queen of Spades is the most typical of St Petersburg among Tchaikovsky’s works; the plot unfolds in the Summer Garden, along the Winter Palace Canal, at the home of the Countess on Malaya Morskaya Street, on public squares of the city and in army barracks. The characters and the mood are also typical of St Petersburg. The Queen of Spades drew Alexander Blok and Mikhail Kuzmin among other poets of the early 20th century. Alexandre Benois was so inspired by Tchaikovsky’s work that he linked this opus with the very concept of the World of Art movement. Coming to work in the State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (as the Mariinsky Theatre was then called) in 1921, he immediately staged The Queen of Spades, both directing and designing the production.
The Queen of Spades remains one of the most popular repertoire pieces. Stars from each and every generation – Nikolai and Medea Figner, Maria Slavina, Sofia Preobrazhenskaya, Nikolai Pechkovsky, Yuri Marusin, Alexei Stablyanko, Vladimir Galuzin, Valentina Tsydshova, Galina Gorchakova, Irina Bogacheva, Larisa Diadkova and Sergei Leiferkus – have created unforgettable images as Liza, Hermann, the Countess and Tomsky.
Since it’s world premiere one hundred and twenty-five years ago, the opera has been staged six times at the Mariinsky Theatre. To this day the theatre performs the 1984 production – it’s Music and Stage Director was Yuri Temirkanov. The 1999 production enjoyed a brief but glittering life (Stage Director: Alexander Galibin; Music Director: Valery Gergiev).
Alexei Stepanyuk is working on the new production, having last season staged Eugene Onegin at the Mariinsky-II.
The stage director underlines the St Petersburg mood of The Queen of Spades: “Pyotr Tchaikovsky was writing about himself, about his life, about his fate, about his wish to be like everyone else and the right to be different. This opera is about the inscrutability of the soul, the inscrutability of the city in which we live. This story could only have taken place in St Petersburg, a city of white nights, a city of ghosts...”
Production team:
Stage Director: Alexei Stepanyuk; Production Designer: Alexander Orlov; Costume Designer: Irina Cherednikova; Lighting Designer Alexander Sivaev; Principal Chorus Master: Andrei Petrenko; Musical Preparation: Irina Soboleva; Choreographer: Ilya Ustyantsev; Musical Director and Conductor: Valery Gergiev.
Roles are being rehearsed by:
Herman: Maxim Aksenov, Mikhail Vekua
Count Tomsky: Roman Burdenko,
Viktor Korotich, Edward Tsanga
Prince Eletsky: Vladislav Sulimsky, Vladimir Moroz, Alexander Kuznetsov
The Countess: Elena Vitman, Maria Maksakova, Olga Savova
Liza: Tatiana Pavlovskaya, Tatiana Serjan , Irina Churilova
Polina: Yekaterina Sergeyeva, Yekaterina Krapivina
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