Programme Guide

After the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, the first opera that the Berliner Philharmoniker were able to mount as a staged production under the baton of Kirill Petrenko was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades. The performance also marked the conclusion of a much acclaimed focus on Tchaikovsky, as part of which the orchestra and its chief conductor presented three of the composer’s operas within one season (Mazeppa and Iolanta in addition to Queen of Spades).

In Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, Pushkin’s novella, which is characterised by a mercilessly satirical view of society, is transformed into the tragic love story between Lisa and Hermann, a gambling addict. Soprano Elena Stikhina and tenor Arsen Soghomonyan shone in the leading roles in this performance at the 2022 Baden-Baden Easter Festival. The opulently staged production by the directing duo Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier shifts the action of the opera into the world of venal love.

As Kirill Petrenko stated in an interview for the Digital Concert Hall, he considers Tchaikovsky’s penultimate opera a “jewel” and perhaps the most significant Russian musical drama from the second half of the 19th century. Not only its compositional quality, but also the musical shaping of this performance was very well received by the audience and the press: “Under Petrenko’s ingenious direction, we hear an opera that integrates singing into the drama in such a natural way, that singing can be understood as an action in a way that has not been achieved since Mozart” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).