MUSIC THE villain of Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, which was
given at Covent Garden on December 21st, is the composer's brother Modest, who turned Pushkin's sardonic, Hoffmannesque tale into a conven- tional operatic libretto. The protagonist of Pushkin's story, Hermann, is a thrifty and calculating German, who enters into a clandestine relationship with Lisa simply as a means of having access to the old Countess, whose secret of winning at the card- table he means at any price to possess. There is no genuine love- interest in Pushkin's story. Modest Tchaikovsky changed all this, introducing Hermann as a love-sick, " fated " figure from the start and making Lisa a colourless operatic heroine. It was impossible ro show on the stage the Countess's funeral where Pushkin makes the corpse wink at Hermann, and this is merely suggested in a narration with a choir singing funeral music in the wings. Finally Pushkin's Hermann goes mad and ends as " No. 17 in the Obukhovsky Hospital " and Lisa marries a son of the Countess's steward, " a very amiable young man," whereas Modest Tchaikovsky makes Lisa jump into the Neva and Hermann stab himself at the gaming-table. In fact melodrama and convention everywhere replace the wit and caustic characterisation of Pushkin's tale.
Tchaikovsky's music is a hotchpotch of many manners. The children playing at soldiers in Act 1 are a weak imitation of Carmen ; there is a pretty eighteenth-century pastiche ballet in
Act 2 (unaccountably cut at Covent Garden), a hint of folk-music Act 1 and more French elements in the second and last scenes of the opera. The only unfailingly effective parts of the opera are the macabre and " fated " emotional scenes where Hermann is con- cerned, directly or indirectly. The scene in the Countess's bedroom is masterly in its creation of atmosphere from beginning to end, and the melodramatic finale is effective in its conventional way. The weakness of the opera_lies in the absence of strong and characteristic lyrical music. We could have forgiven Modest Tchai- kovsky for vulgarising Pushkin if his brother had given us more good tunes.
At Covent Garden the part of Hermann, which needs a most skilled and experienced dramatic singer, was played by Edgar Evans, who sang with feeling and expression but hardly achieved the dramatic stature of the role. Hilde Zadek's Lisa was efficient but not winning or strongly pathetic. Edith Coates, on the other hand, gave one of her very best performances as the old Countest, a most distinguished piece of acting. Erich Kleiber again showed what can be done with the Covent Garden orchestra, and raised the whole performance to a level of musical feeling and, dramatic intensity which will create a new standard at Covent Garden. Oliver Messel's sets and clothes, pretty in themselves, sometimes struck a fantastic and exaggerated note which suggested the ballet rather than opera. The Tchaikovsky brothers moved the setting of Pushkin's story, back by a whole generation, from the 1830s to the 1790s, thereby making nonsense of the 87-year-old Countess's reminiscences of Versailles but giving greater scope to the designer of clothes and scenery. Pushkin's detailed description of the Countess's bedroom --small iron bed, Chinese tapestries, fans, porcelain figares—was disregarded in favour of a bolder and more effective setting which, however, reduced the old lady from a character to a type. The apparition of the Countess's ghost to Hermann would have been more effective if the shadow on the door could have disappeared suddenly instead of receding like a human shadow. The final scene in the card-room was most effective and its " staginess " wholly in accordance with the Tchaikovsky melodrama. MARTIN COOPER.
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