Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is probably his greatest opera, certainly the one in which his characteristic strengths are on display. Pondering on them inevitably leads one to think about what the operas lack, too, and it turns out be quite a lot. Unlike the finest opera composers, of whom there are regrettably few, he can’t create complete characters: what he is interested in is characteristics, especially — or perhaps only — obsessions, even if the obsession, as with Eugene Onegin, is with not being obsessed with anything, until close to the end.
In The Queen of Spades the anti-hero Herman is doubly obsessed, though Tchaikovsky and his librettist brother Modest didn’t really pull this off, so we aren’t ever really sure whether he is in love with Liza, or whether his only interest throughout is in the cards which will secure his fortune.
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