Unsubtle lead a wild card in potential winning hand for Met’s “Queen of Spades”
Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, which opened Friday night as the final production of this season, has a short but notable history at the Metropolitan Opera. Its premiere house performances were conducted by Gustav Mahler, and this 1995 Elijah Moshinsky production was the Met debut for Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the final American performances from Leonie Rysanek.
Notable in this season’s run is the house debut of tenor Arsen Soghomonyan as the gambler Hermann. Opposite him is soprano Sonya Yoncheva, the woman he longs for and also manipulates. Her grandmother, the mysterious Countess, is mezzo-soprano Violeta Urmana, and her fiancé, Prince Yeletsky, is baritone Igor Golovatenko. Keri-Lynn Wilson conducts singers and orchestra.
The Queen of Spades is an odd opera. The music is gorgeous, but the narrative comprises two or even three stories that are more shoved together than integrated. The main ones center on Hermann, his crazed obsessions with both gambling and Lisa, and also the Countess’ enigmatic back story and her knowledge of the three secret cards that guarantee winnings. To make this work as a drama takes not just fine musical performances but the kind of chemistry between the leads that makes for believable love and betrayal.
Friday night, the singing was almost, but not quite, fine enough, but the main problem was the chemistry between Hermann and Lisa was just not convincing—nor did the pending betrothal between Lisa and Yeletsky feel substantial. Moshinsky’s beautiful, elegant production and its fantastic set pieces almost filled the gaps. The same for the wonderful playing from the orchestra under Wilson, the finest one has had from the pit this season.
Soghomonyan has a powerful, colorful, dramatic quality, and vocally threw himself into everything. This was often exciting but unfortunately without much nuance. The one respite from blunt intensity was his Act I entrance, singing about his obsession with Lisa. He had a haunted quality that promised depth, but after that he pushed at everything so hard that the character had no real communication with Lisa, singing past her. Relying on force at climactic moments, his voice broke several times.
Yoncheva’s sound is darker than one imagines for Lisa, who is not just young but naïve and pliable, but in the context of the evening that actually helped the character hold her own against Hermann. Her lighter moments in the second scene in Act I, and her aria in Act III as she waits for Hermann were quite fine, delicate, musical, and passionate. But again she and Soghomonyan never meshed.
Her finest interactions were with mezzo Maria Barakova, who sang both Pauline and Daphnis. Her sound was rich and also floating, with graceful phrasing and an excellent stage presence. In the play-within-the-play in the party scene in Act II—a spectacular tableaux in this production—she drew the complete focus of the listener, above and beyond the dancing and the incredibly adorably child cherub.
Barakova was just part of the terrific performances from all the secondary characters. Golovatenko was also fine as Yeletsky, singing with precise, easy phrasing and superb musicality, that it was a frustration how the opera drops that character for long stretches. Tenor Chad Shelton and bass Raymond Aceto were excellent as Tchekalinsky and Sourin, convivial and vivacious, not just singing but playing the parts and trying to ground the music into drama.
Urmana was just as fine as the Countess. The character does not have a lot of music, and in this production spends most of the performance wearing a series of extraordinary gowns—including a striking red one that brilliantly sets her apart from the general black and white color scheme. Her shining moment in Act II, singing about the past, was mesmerizing. Urmana did it all with gentle changes in dynamics, a natural mix of breathing and singing, the finest moment of the night and a lesson in how musicality can be more profound than pure vocal chops.
Despite the flowing, glowing music from the pit, and generally fine voices, and especially the secondary performances, there was a general stiffness all evening (something that may work itself out in future performances).
Again, this felt like a problem generated from the leads, especially Soghomonyan, the sense that he was singing the part but not the character. That was exacerbated by the multiple pauses while the stage was changed for the next scene. This is the one flaw in this production, and it’s notable for how it interrupts the flow and turns many scenes into disconnected capsules. On the knife’s edge of making Queen of Spades work, and presenting it as a series of long, somewhat related scenes, Friday night just missed the cut.
The Queen of Spades continues through June 7. metopera.org
Posted May 24, 2025 at 4:54 pm by Stanton Ann
This review is spot on!
Posted May 27, 2025 at 6:08 am by Alex
Soghomonyan already performed this role to great acclaim with Kirill Petrenko and Berlin Philharmonic both on stage in Basel Baden and in the concert version in Berlin. Having personally heard him, I would say the role is perfect for his voice. He made a wonderful impression in that role a couple of years ago and I bought tickets to hear him at the Met again.
The real question is whether the conductor, who is obviously not of Kirill Petrenko’s caliber, and the Met orchestra, which clearly declined in the last decade, supported the leading vocalists and understood each singers’s instrument, breathing pattern, and the music itself well enough. Queen of Spades is a deeply psychological and multidimensional opera with a thrilling complex score. Tchaikovsky was an innovator of his time, and if the orchestra and conductor are not committted to the work, have not rehearsed it enough or are not in top form, they have great difficulty supporting the leads and musically shaping the drama.
If the staging itself breaks dramatic flow, you can easily see how the stop and go pattern on stage (which is not in the character of this opera’s music) along with sluggish and insensitive support from the pit can greatly affect the perception of the leading vocalists.
Having personally heard Soghomonyan elsewhere in this role, I assure the problem is not with his ability to interpret this role and deliver a gripping portrait of the character.