Les Arts premieres ‘The Queen of Spades’, a drama of ghosts, greed and revenge with the hypnotic beauty of Tchaikovsky’s music
25.09.2023
Les Arts és Òpera
- James Gaffigan conducts a cast featuring leading figures of the repertoire: Arsen Soghomonyan, Elena Guseva, Doris Soffel, and Nikolay Zemlianskikh
- Les Arts premieres the award-winning production by British director Richard Jones, which has caused a sensation in its performances in Europe and the United States.
Valencia (25.09.23). The Palau de les Arts premieres this Sunday, October 1, 'The Queen of Spades' by Tchaikovsky, one of the masterpieces of the operatic repertoire, to inaugurate the 2023-2024 Season in the Main Hall.
The artistic director of Les Arts, Jesús Iglesias Noriega, presented this title at a press conference today, along with its musical director, James Gaffigan, and Benjamin Davis, stage director of the revival in Valencia of this production by Richard Jones.
Iglesias Noriega has highlighted that, with 'The Queen of Spades', the repertoire of Les Arts incorporates what is considered the composer's masterpiece, as well as one of the essential and most appreciated pieces by the public of Russian opera.
According to him, Tchaikovsky's penultimate opera is "a supernatural tragedy about greed and obsession that will absorb the audience with its extremely high emotional tension, the hypnotic beauty of its music, and the exceptional talent for drama of the Russian composer."
Therefore, Iglesias Noriega has invited everyone to discover a work that “is much more romantic than 'Rigoletto', with a score as breathtaking as the composer's best symphonies: at times majestic, dramatic, grandiose and sad, on par with the lyricism of its arias, such as “Ya vas lyublyu” ('I love her'), which is one of the greatest hits in the history of opera.”
Based on Alexander Pushkin's short story of the same name, 'The Queen of Spades' portrays the obsession, and subsequent downfall, of a young officer, Herman, as he tries to uncover the secret of the Countess's mastery of cards—the grandmother of his fiancée, Lisa. Ghosts, death, and revenge intertwine in one of Tchaikovsky's last works, written three years after its successful premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1890.
James Gaffigan takes over the musical direction of the work. After opening the symphony season, the New York maestro inaugurates the activity in the Main Hall with this opera, which, as he himself points out, is Tchaikovsky's most fascinating.
“Everyone knows 'Eugene Onegin,' which is performed much more frequently. But it is in 'The Queen of Spades' where Tchaikovsky gives us his most splendid orchestration: a score that will allow us to celebrate the sound and palette of colors of the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana,” Gaffigan emphasizes, referring to the Romantic repertoire on which the resident ensemble of Les Arts has built its international prestige.
Likewise, the musical director of Les Arts has praised a cast, which he himself has described as "exceptional", headed by the Herman of the Armenian tenor Arsen Soghomonyan, who has recently sung the role with the Berlin Philharmonic in Baden-Baden under the orders of Kirill Petrenko and, in addition, has been the Otello of Gergiev and Mehta.
She is accompanied by a luxurious Countess, the veteran Doris Soffel, remembered at Les Arts for her heartbreaking Klytämnestra in 'Elektra', the Russian soprano Elena Guseva in the role of the female protagonist, Lisa, as well as the baritones Andrei Kymach (Count Tomski) and Nikolay Zemlianskikh (Prince Ieletski)
Following the success of 'Ariodante', Les Arts premieres another essential production by the prestigious British director Richard Jones. Awarded at the 2001 UK Theatre Awards, this staging of 'The Queen of Spades', with set and costume design by John Macfarlane and lighting by Jennifer Tipton, is one of the leading productions on the international opera circuit.
According to Benjamin Davis, stage director of the revival, Richard Jones's proposal "takes us into the increasingly obsessive mind and passionate character of its protagonist; Herman, an anti-hero with whom the composer himself empathized."
Regarding the production design, pictorial sets and costumes, they refer both to the setting of Pushkin's story, the lost glory days of Catherine the Great, and to a fascist period of the 1930s.
Another characteristic, Davis points out, is the inclusion of puppets as a vehicle for staging Herman's psychological disturbances. On the one hand, in the Mozartian pastiche, in which the endearing puppet show transforms before his eyes into the chilling tale of the Countess's fortune, or in the first scene of Act III, after her death, when the noblewoman emerges from Hermann's mind as a skeletal hallucination.
'The Queen of Spades' is a co-production of the Welsh National Opera, the Norske Opera of Oslo, the Teatro Comunale of Bologna and the Canadian Opera Company.
Following Thursday's preview for those under 29, Les Arts will premiere 'The Queen of Spades' on Sunday, October 1. The remaining performances will take place on the 4th, 7th, 10th, and 14th of that same month.
