Tchaikovsky's
The Queen of Spades (Pikovaya Dama) delivers a decidedly mixed bag: a lush, gushingly romantic score, rich with gorgeous, often-sprawling arias and ensembles, married to a tryingly melodramatic and barely credible tale of love and obsession. Short of fitting the music to a new story line, there's no way around the saga of the young, brooding army officer Ghermann, a nutcake whose love addiction to the beautiful Lisa is matched only by his gambling obsession, and the aforementioned sweet thing, forlorn over her arranged marriage to Prince Yeletsky, whose blind love for the increasingly delusional soldier enables her to overlook such major shortcomings as incipient insanity.
Yes, I'm having fun with words. But it's better than screaming at the absurdity of it all.
I had high hopes for the estimable Donald Pippin's English setting and Pocket Opera's treatment of the score. Over the past 30 years, Pippin has proven a master at presenting the convoluted librettos of Handel operas with a wit and conductorial deftness that transforms them into frequently delightful, compelling experiences.
His Offenbach and Mozart, too, are typically marvelous, earning copious praise in my reviews for
Opera News Online. Pippin's gift for pithy one-liners usually produces guffaws faster than I can scribble down his words, and his choice of singers, combined with his usually unerring sense of appropriate tempos, can make for musical heaven.
But what was Pippin to do in the case of Tchaikovsky's over-the-top libretto and a chamber orchestra of eight (including his piano)? If he had punctuated the singing with his usual droll commentary, he would have undercut his artists' attempts at histrionic credibility. And if he had even tried to convey Tchaikovsky's rolling waves of treacherous romance, his miniensemble would have sunk in the attempt. Therefore, Pippin played it as straight as he could, removing large chunks of orchestral peroration in order to streamline the spectacle, and mostly confining the spoken commentary that he injects between scenes to summaries of action unseen.
Down Cast
As for his casting, Pippin regrettably stumbled. In his Pocket Opera debut, Norman DeVol exhibited a fine lyric tenor more suited to Mozart's Tamino or Don Ottavio than Tchaikovsky's Ghermann. The voice is too lightweight lower in the range, and too lacking in drama farther up, to inhabit the role. What made matters worse — far worse — was that DeVol sang such lines as "Lisa, I love you" with all the conviction of a worn-out, postmenopausal waitress reciting the line, "One burger, hold the cheese." Nor, even if his life was at stake, could the man act his way out of a paper bag. He might as well have been carrying a water pistol, for all the force with which he waved his gun around.
Similarly stretched was Yoo Ri Clark, who was named a Western regional finalist in auditions for the Metropolitan Opera. With a voice that was far more suited to her previous portrayals of Zerlina, Rosina, and the Queen of the Night, she lacked the dramatic thrust necessary for Lisa. Her sound has an unquestionable fineness to it, but it's a far cry from what the composer requires. You can't fault her for retaining the same, perpetually forlorn expression; Maria Guleghina does much the same in the splendid Kirov Opera DVD, conducted by Valery Gergiev. Putting it all together, however, we were left with very little Lisa.
As the aged Countess, a former beauty who takes to the grave her secret formula for winning at cards, Rosalee Szabo suited the role more physically than vocally. Her instrument, which has embraced such roles as Carmen, Erda, and Fricka, remains steady, but it has little strength. The Countess' long reverie, here conveyed from a chair that looked shamefully like a Goodwill reject, presents a grand opportunity to the prima donna who can pull it off with poignancy. Here, not.
Nor did the muffled production of Adam Meza, singing the role of Prince Yeletsky, make much of an impression. (The marvelously gifted, if-he-doesn't-make-it-all-the-way-something-is-not-right-
with-the-world Jason Detwiler bowled people over with Yeletsky's aria in the recent West Bay Opera production.)
The good news was the casting of the smaller roles. Jeffrey C. Wang excelled as Tchekalinsky; the exceedingly handsome but stiff, one-faced William O'Neill impressed vocally as Sourin; and Meghan Dibble sang well as the Governess. The duet of Ayelet Cohen (Chloe) and Julia Ulehla (Daphnis), part of a lighter scene that got the most applause of the evening, left me wanting more from both. Jennifer La Morgese's costumes were everywhere appropriate and fetching.
By contrast, if this is the best that Stage Director Jane Erwin Hammett can do, she had better stick to singing, which she did wonderfully in Pocket's
Merry Widow. And if Daniel Yelen was indeed responsible for the junk furniture onstage, his credit as "Propsmaster" needs rethinking.