Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is one of those operas that under-promises on paper but over-delivers on stage. It’s hard to summarise the plot in a way that makes it sound theatrical, even if you’ve read Pushkin’s novella, and I’ve never found a recording that really hits the spot. And yet, time and again, in the theatre: wham! It goes up like a petrol bomb. With a good production and performers, Tchaikovsky hurls you out at the far end feeling almost hungover – head swimming, and wondering where those three hours went.
The cast and staging at Garsington are very, very good. True, you’d expect great things from any production that can afford to cast Roderick Williams (Yeletsky) and Robert Hayward (Tomsky) in what are essentially supporting roles, and the director is Jack Furness, who at his best (like his Garsington Rusalka in 2022) has been responsible for some of the most compelling British opera of the past decade. Furness is on top form here, delivering multilayered storytelling underpinned by subtle characterisation. He has an eye for spectacle, as well as the tiny details that speaks volumes.
The Philharmonia is the orchestra, and while they haven’t always brought their A-game to Garsington, they’ve typically responded well to the festival’s artistic director Douglas Boyd. Good news: he’s conducting The Queen of Spades, and from the first notes – the clarinet’s question in the silence; that hot-breathed surge of string tone – it’s as tense as a guilty conscience. Cue baleful brass chords, aching woodwinds and those quiet, nagging ostinatos which mean that like the opera’s anti-hero Herman (Aaron Cawley), we never really get to relax.
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