The obsessive outsider: ‘The Queen of Spades’ at Garsington
The Queen of Spades © Julian Guidera
Obsession. That’s the driving force behind Tchaikovsky’s great opera The Queen of Spades. The new production at Garsington gives it full throttle. The main character Herman appears in all seven scenes, but never gambles because he is obsessed with finding the secret that allowed the old Countess to win at cards. Meanwhile her granddaughter Lisa is in love with this man, who appears to be a frugal and methodical chap, and also madly in love with her, though she is slightly above his station.
In order to succeed, Herman needs the Countess’s secret of which three cards to play at Faro. He threatens the elderly lady with a pistol, causing her to die of shock. The secret is now lost, but the Countess’s ghost appears to him to reveal three cards: three, seven, ace. As Lisa waits for Herman to arrive in response to her letter, her happiness hangs in the balance. He arrives late but is desperate to go to the gambling hall, where he has never actually played before. This time he does, ignoring Lisa. In despair, she takes her own life.
Herman, meanwhile, wins on his first card, the three. He doubles up and wins again, on the seven. Placing everything he has on the third card, he believes he has won and proudly shows his card. But Count Yeletsky, who has challenged him in revenge for the loss of Lisa, points out that he holds not the ace but the Queen of Spades. Herman kills himself.
Like the eponymous main character of Tchaikovsky’s other operatic masterpiece Eugene Onegin, Herman is an outsider. In this production by Jack Furness, he appears as a scruffy man with long dark hair. His obsession is strongly conveyed, as in the pastoral scene during the masked ball of Act 2, where the other men have to drag him away while Lisa performs the shepherdess role.
The opera’s original setting in the time of Catherine the Great (1762–96) is well displayed in Tom Piper’s designs, and the theme of being an outsider (both Tchaikovsky and his brother Modest, who based the libretto on Pushkin’s novella of the same title, were gay) is ever present. In the end both Herman and Lisa are dead, believing themselves damned. Tragic characters both, and I loved the way her body was lifted up and carried off stage.
As Herman, Aaron Cawley sang this exhausting role strongly throughout, while Laura Wilde sang beautifully in a lovely portrayal of Lisa. Nobility and gravitas from Robert Hayward in the role of Count Tomsky, an old friend of Herman who relates the story of the three cards whose secret the Countess has given to only two men (her husband and later her young lover). An apparition once warned her that any third man will try to kill her for the secret, and so it turns out. As the Countess herself, Harriet Williams stepped in at the last minute and sang well, and Roderick Williams provided luxury casting as an excellent Prince Yeletsky.
The orchestra under the baton of Douglas Boyd played extremely well, after a slightly wobbly start. If you want to be drawn into obsession in the time of Catherine the Great you cannot do better than this excellent production.
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