PIQUE DAME/THE QUEEN OF SPADES the premiere
Pikovaya Dama (Pique Dame, The Queen of Spades): opera in three acts, libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky based on Alexander Pushkin's novella, music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), first shown at the Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 19, 1890 with the following cast:
Lisa: Medea Mei-Figner; Gherman: Nikolai Figner; Yeletsky: Leonid Yakovlev; Tomsky: Ivan Melnikov; Countess: Mariya Slavina; Polina: Maria Dolina. Conductor: Eduard Napravnik
The protagonists:
Lisa (soprano), the
Countess' granddaughter; Gherman or Herman (tenor), an army engineer;
Prince Yeletsky (baritone), an officer, Lisa's fiancé; Count
Tomsky (baritone), an officer; the Countess (soprano or
mezzo-soprano), called the Queen of Spades; Polina or Paulina
(mezzo-soprano), Lisa's friend
Location: St. Petersburg; time: late 18th century
synopsis
PIQUE DAME/THE QUEEN OF SPADES background
The libretto of Peter IlyichTchaikovsky's last full-length opera came to him almost by accident: his brother Modest had written the text for Nikolai Klenovsky, Tchaikovsky's pupil, who, however, turned it down. Although at first Tchaikovsky showed little interest in the subject, his imagination was caught by Pushkin's novella even before the libretto was finally his.
The winter of 1889 found him in a period of great personal problems and he fled from St. Petersburg to Italy for some respite. In Florence and Rome he set to work feverishly ("...I have put my whole being into this work.") and composed the opera in only 44 days. His correspondence from that time is revealing. To his brother Modest he wrote on March 3, 1890:
"I finished the opera three hours ago... When I got to Gherman's death and the final chorus I was suddenly overcome by such commiseration with Gherman that I started to weep terribly. This eventually turned into a very pleasant sort of hysteria, by which I mean, it was so sweet to cry. Later I found out why I wept (never before have I spilled any tears over any of my heroes, and I am trying to determine why I suddenly had this desire). It seems that Gherman was not simply a means for me to write this or that kind of music, but that he is a real, alive, and even likeable person... I think that my warm feelings towards the hero of the opera find a positive reflection in the music. Moreover, it seems to me that 'Pique Dame' is a fine opera. Let us see what will become of it!"
By mid-June, back in St. Petersburg, he finished the scoring. The vocal parts had been written with specific singers in mind. Earlier, while still in Italy, Tchaikovsky had worried about his Gherman. Letter to Modest on February 6, 1890: "What can we do so that the role is not too exhausting for poor Figner? Seven scenes, and he's in every single one!... I am filled with terror when I think of what I have already written for him, and how much still remains to be written. I'm worried that the powers of the poor man will be too severely taxed. But it's not just Figner - any artist would panic at the thought of being on stage and singing almost the whole time..."
Nikolai Figner's wife, Italian soprano Medea Mei-Figner, was pregnant by the time of the premiere on December 19, 1890, which did not prevent her from creating the role of Lisa. Although it was quite successful, the opera was not what might be termed a smash hit. But Kiev played it within weeks of the premiere, and soon it was seen in Moscow (1891), Odessa and Prague (1892).
If it was slow to take off, it did have strong advocates, among them Gustav Mahler, who brought Pique Dame not only to Vienna (1902) but also to the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1910), where the cast included Leo Slezak and Emmy Destinn as the pair of doomed lovers; the opera was sung in German.
At La Scala is was not performed until 1906, in Italian, while Paris (1911), London (1915), Barcelona (1922) and Buenos Aires (1924) gave the opera in Russian.
By all accounts a moody, difficult character who was rarely pleased with his own compositions, Tchaikovsky nevertheless valued his Pique Dame very highly, so highly that he placed it right at the top of the list of his operatic compositions.
The great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), whose life was cut short by a fatal injury received in a duel defending the honour of his wife, was an extremely versatile author whose output included narrative poetry, verse novels (e.g. Onegin), dramas, fairytales, short stories (e.g. Pique Dame). His literary works have been a rich mine for Russian opera composers: Glinka ('Ruslan and Lyudmila'), Dargomizhsky ('Rusalka' and 'The Stone Guest'), Mussorgsky ('Boris Godunov'), Tchaikovsky ('Eugen Onegin' 1879, 'Mazeppa' 1884, 'Pique Dame' 1890), Rachmaninoff ('Aleko' and 'The Miserly Knight'), Rimsky-Korsakov ('Mozart and Salieri', 'The Tale of Tsar Saltan', 'The Golden Cockerel'), Stravinsky ('Mavra').
Modest Tchaikovsky's libretto differs in various aspects from Pushkin's 'Pique Dame' (published in 1834). The most significant change concerns the relationship between Gherman and Lisa. In the novella, Gherman is driven by pure greed and merely uses Lisa as a means to gain access to the Countess and her secret of the three cards to assure his success at the gambling table. There is no 'love interest', and Lisa does not drown herself. Tchaikovsky did not like the idea of having an all-male final act ("... this is boring.") and thus the dramatic scene between Lisa and Gherman by the Winter Canal was inserted.
As in Pushkin, Tchaikovsky's Gherman is an outsider, a commoner amongst fellow officers who are aristocrats. To reinforce this, Lisa became the Countess' granddaughter (not just her ward), and thus a member of the nobility herself who promised social advancement to which he could legitimately aspire only if he also had the necessary financial background. This puts a different slant on his motives for gaining the secret.
Last but not least, and operatically speaking not as spectacular a finale as the suicide, Pushkin's Gherman leaves the gambling table to end his days in a lunatic asylum, mechanically muttering 'Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen!'.
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