An egomaniac director ruins the Royal Opera House’s production of The Queen Of Spades

A sorry shambles: an egomaniac director ruins the Royal Opera House’s production of The Queen Of Spades, arguably Tchaikovsky’s finest opera

The Queen Of Spades

Royal Opera House, London                                                       Until February 1 

Rating:

Stefan Herheim’s production of arguably Tchaikovsky’s finest opera is a shambles. 

And we can’t say we weren’t warned. The veteran English mezzo Felicity Palmer, outstanding as the Countess here, last weekend condemned Herheim’s determination to distort the plot to reflect the composer’s own inner demons. 

‘I am quite happy to experiment. But if you’re not honouring what’s clearly on the page, then we are flying blind,’ she said. ‘You’re never going to attract a new public if they’re flummoxed.’

Stefan Herheim’s production of arguably Tchaikovsky’s finest opera, The Queen Of Spades, is a shambles. Although some of the cast impress, Eva-Maria Westbroek is erratic as Liza (above)

Stefan Herheim’s production of arguably Tchaikovsky’s finest opera, The Queen Of Spades, is a shambles. Although some of the cast impress, Eva-Maria Westbroek is erratic as Liza (above)

Just so. And most of the audience were almost too bemused even to boo when Herheim and his gang came on for their curtain call.

Why is it left to a singer to make these points? Why not Covent Garden’s management? Furthermore, why were they so desperate to attract Herheim, allowing him to dish up the warmed-up leftovers of a 2016 production from Amsterdam?

This production has been universally panned, which should induce the new director of opera Oliver Mears (who didn’t book this one) to say ‘Never again’.

And maybe music director Antonio Pappano has to recognise that however brilliant a performance he conducts, it all goes for nothing if an egomaniac like Herheim dominates the show.

Pappano is a first-class conductor of Russian romantic music, as I am sure he will once again demonstrate next month when he conducts the Royal Opera House Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s underrated Suite No 3.

Herheim imagines he can reshape the piece as he chooses. Here he takes a minor character, Prince Yeletsky (Vladimir Stoyanov, above), and turns him into Tchaikovsky. Why?

Herheim imagines he can reshape the piece as he chooses. Here he takes a minor character, Prince Yeletsky (Vladimir Stoyanov, above), and turns him into Tchaikovsky. Why?

Perhaps the saddest thing about this sorry mess is that if it had been a concert performance, despite Aleksandrs Antonenko’s wayward Gherman and Eva-Maria Westbroek’s erratic, over-the-hill Liza, it would have been received with acclaim.

Herheim imagines himself the equal of the composer and librettist of any opera he directs, with a licence to reshape the piece as he chooses. 

Here he takes a minor character – Liza’s hopeless old fiancé, Prince Yeletsky – and turns him into Tchaikovsky, wandering around, waving his arms about and getting in everybody’s way. 

This is annoying throughout, and especially ruinous in the pivotal scene between Gherman and the Countess, where he tries so forcefully to get her to reveal the secret of the three cards that she drops dead.

Much of what Herheim does is emptily pretentious. Some of it, though, is pure Monty Python. At the end of Act II, Catherine the Great strips off to reveal Gherman in drag! Why? Who knows? Who cares?

Herheim’s adolescent sexual obsessions that so marred last summer’s Glyndebourne Pelléas Et Mélisande, with the rape of a young child by his father, were also in evidence here. 

At the beginning, Tchaikovsky is engaged in oral sex with a soldier – Gherman again, of course – and the innocent relationship between Liza and her friend Paulina is turned into a full-on lesbian encounter. Enough already. 

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