Fantastic Galouzine, Well conceived Pushkin interpretation
In the short story upon which this opera is based, Pushkin has Herman as a quite unsympathetic character. He is a relatively impoverished army officer who can only watch with envy as his colleagues gamble. He hears about a countess who knows the secret for three winning cards, seduces her ward to gain access to the countess and is responsible for her death. The countess comes to him in a dream and gives him the numbers of the winning cards. But when he stakes his all on the third card, it turns out to be the queen of spades instead of the ace. He loses all, goes insane, and ends up in a madhouse.
In this opera, as it is written and usually produced, Modest Tchaikovsky softened Herman's character in his libretto, and has him really (at first) in love with Lisa, and finally committing suicide. Pyotr wept as he wrote the moving elegy Herman's colleagues sing at the end of this final scene, having come to identify with Herman.
This production, under the...
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