The Queen of Spades review – dark and convincing staging of Tchaikovsky’s compulsive drama

Garsington Opera, WormsleyAaron Cawley brings a prodigious intensity to Pushkin’s antihero Hermann, while a fine ensemble and Douglas Boyd on the podium help drive the innovative score forwardGarsington’s production of The Queen of Spades leaves little room for doubt that this is Tchaikovsky’s most substantial and forward-looking operatic achievement. There are a few debatable aspects to Jack Furness’s ingeniously busy production and Tom Piper’s mirror-dominated stage designs, and on the opening night it took time for the show to fully hit its musical stride. Overall, though, this is an overwhelmingly convincing staging of a genuine music drama, and it will surely come to be seen as one of Garsington’s most notable milestones.The opera’s 18th-century setting, following Pushkin’s short story, is retained. But in every other respect this is an unmistakably dark 21st-century reading. Furness is good at inserting troubling new details into the opera’s apparently sunnier moments, literally so when black curtains zip across the late afternoon Garsington windows. The children playing soldiers on the banks of the Neva are here more sinister than cute, while the costume ball scene is riddled with transgressive suggestion. Suffice to say that the grand entrance of Catherine the Great after the ball scene’s pastorale will not end as traditionalists will expect either. Continue reading...

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