Ardent soul

All the main characters in The Queen of Spades – Lisa, Yeletsky and of course Herman – are people with very rich, sensitive souls, capable of immediately feeling the wind of energy: the bright energy, the dark energy. They are drawn together by premonition and, of course, passion. You can see this from the music and especially from the text. Somehow these souls are wounded; without yet even experiencing real tragedy, they somehow know what this is.

It is in the text of course. From her very first appearance, she already says, “He is standing in front of me again, a mysterious and gloomy stranger. In his eyes I see a mad, burning passion! Who is he? Why is he following me?” She feels all of this sorrow, this suffering emanating from him. Right after that, she says, “I’m scared.” Everybody is scared at the beginning because they have this premonition. This premonition is very clearly heard in the music, the genius music of Tchaikovsky, who always hides it somewhere in the harmony, and it grabs you suddenly. It’s like Eugene Onegin, but in The Queen of Spades, it becomes much more dramatic and fatalistic, I would say.

Lisa’s character is somehow predetermined for tragedy. In the very beginning, she already sounds much wiser and much older than her girlfriends. Her phrases are not only very melancholic, but they also contain this hidden tragedy, even if nothing has happened yet. She is supposed to be happy. She is supposed to be getting married with the most gorgeous man – but she is unhappy. And of course it’s all about profound passion. Passion coming from the very bottom of your heart, from your ardent soul, all of which makes you suffer. But you cannot sustain it, it is just too much, it is killing you. It is amazing to experience those kinds of feelings because many people are not able to feel that.

You must sing exactly what is written in the score, just like Verdi. Don’t invent anything. Don’t do the melodramatic thing. Because we always must remember that in Tchaikovsky the main voice is that of the orchestra. Whatever happens, the most important thing happens in the orchestra. The singers are only part of the whole musical line. Therefore, you must respect what the composer wrote and just follow his instructions, because everything is written in the music. And then the final effect will be exactly like he intended it.

I lived in St. Petersburg for 17 years and I know all the locations in the opera. The house where the Countess’s ghost appeared is not far from the house where Tchaikovsky used to live, at 11 Bolshaya Konyushennaya Street. The place where Lisa sings her last aria and drowns herself in the water is the Winter Canal, not far from the Hermitage Museum. I know all these places and they are all somehow imbued with the music of Tchaikovsky.