Stirred but not shaken

Tchaikovsky was interested in states of mind, but not in the people who have them, at least in his operas. That was what I came to feel as I thought about why his most fascinating operas are in some respects so absorbing and in others not, why I tend to be moved by them at various points, but not cumulatively, as I am in the operas of the great masters. It was also the result of wondering why the Royal Opera’s revival of Queen of Spades, while superb in nearly every way, still didn’t leave me shaken. The thing that isn’t superb about it is Francesca Zambello’s production, first seen in 2001. For a fair amount of the time it is decent and straightforward, but it is handicapped by the absurd set designs of Peter J. Davison, who has rows of tilted theatre boxes on one side of the stage, with spectators coming and going in them, and for the second half of the evening a vast snowdrift obtruding from them, up and down, which the characters move.