THE QUEEN OF SPADES
Piotr Ilyich TchaikovskyOpera in three acts
Libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky,
based upon the eponymous tale by Aleksander Pushkin
All or nothing on three cards
In 1833, Aleksander Pushkin
wrote a tale with dreamlike and profound overtones that captivated
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky with its tortuous paths of the soul it
described: greed and avarice, love deceit and all the remorse that
such acts cause; the death of two deceived women and the madness of
the main character when he finds himself ruined and understands
that his destiny was written from the start in the cards. It is a
metaphor of the deceptive luck in life that allows us to believe
that as human beings we are free from a plan written at birth and
signed with our death.