Love and the urge to see

Evgeny Titov directs Iolanta in Vienna (***½) [stream]

Sonya Yonsheva as Iolanta © Wiener Staatsoper | Michael Pöhn

The fact that Peter Tchaikovsky wrote one last short opera after composing The Queen of Spades a year later is a well-kept secret, for his Iolanta rarely makes it onto the program at our opera houses. Admirers of Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades will find this heart-rending fairy tale utterly charming. But does Iolanta nevertheless belong in the canon of opera classics? Yes, it does, despite the toe-curling moments of praising God, because it holds up a mirror to us: blindness and victim culture are two ills of our society. Iolanta is just as much about people who cannot wake up from the night of propaganda as it is about overprotected weaklings who are confirmed in their role as victims. But the production in Vienna is not convincing.