‘The Queen of Spades’: Unlucky in Love, Lucky in Cards — Tchaikovsky Returns to the Met

It's been nearly a decade since the Metropolitan Opera staged Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's penultimate opera The Queen of Spades (or Pikavaya Dama in Russian, a literal translation from the French Pique Dame). The lavish Elijah Moshinsky production was first unveiled in 1995 and has served as the house debut for Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky along with the return of legendary diva Leonie Rysanek.

A plot straight out of Alexander Pushkin, this bold work, with a libretto by the composer's brother Modest, proved to be a darker, bleaker story from the Russian poet's pen, one that Tchaikovsky took to with abandon. ...