The Guardian - United Kingdom; May 14, 2001
BY ANDREW CLEMENTS
* f The Queen of Spades over the past decade: Graham Vick's at Glyndebourne and Richard Jones's for Welsh National Opera. The Royal Opera's new staging, directed by Francesca Zambello, doesn't begin to compete theatrically with either, although musically it is of the highest international class.
Bernard Haitink's conducting makes up in refinement and surefooted pacing what it lacks in passion and dramatic electricity, while the cast - led by Vladimir Galousine, Karita Mattila, Nikolai Putilin and Dmitri Hvorostovsky - is as good as you could find anywhere today. But the impact of their contributions is constantly undermined by the failure of the production to establish a clear focus - not one of the protagonists is defined with three-dimensional clarity.
Zambello's treatment is wearily naturalistic, spiced just occasionally with post-modern icons. We are stuck with Peter J Davidson's messy set for the whole evening: knocked-about neoclassical porticos, a wall of rococo theatre boxes, and a large snowdrift piled up against one wall. It provides the space for the grander scenes - a few descending chandeliers turn it into Yeletsky's ballroom - but has to rely on flimsy backdrops for Lisa's bedroom and Herman's barracks.
After the interval, the snowdrift sprouts a frosted tree and splits in half to become the banks of the river; out of it, the ghost of the Countess emerges to deliver the secret of the three cards to Herman. It also provides Lisa with an easy way of drowning herself, and (for what presumably is intended as the great dramatic coup) allows the two women to survey the dead Herman at the final curtain.
But really this is an idea-free zone, giving no sense of what Tchaikovsky's masterpiece is all about, or how its themes are resolved.
Galousine's singing as Herman is, however, glorious. Heroically toned and unflagging in even the strenuous demands of the last act - but, dramatically, there is little suggestion of the obsessiveness that drives him to destroy everyone around him. Why should Mattila's feisty, magnetic Lisa (in ravishingly seductive voice) fall for this sad, bespectacled git with a David Seaman ponytail?
Both Hvorostovsky's self-regarding Yeletsky (vocally sumptuous but bland) and Putilin's Tomsky (investing his first-act narrative with great vividness) are ciphers on stage, while Josephine Barstow's Countess is a recycling of her Elizabeth I in Gloriana, right down to the balding, flame-haired wigs. It's all gorgeous to listen to - but utterly uninvolving to watch.
Until May 28. Box office: 020-7304 4000. Broadcast on Radio 3 next Saturday.