Three, seven, ace : the mantra of despair
Willy Decker directs The Queen of Spades in Hamburg (***1/2) [live]
Identification with the main characters is crucial to the experience of any opera. Hermann, the double outcast who sees himself sliding into gambling addiction, cannot be portrayed as a loser who uses Lisa to extract the secret of the three cards from the old Countess in her bedroom. At least not in the version of the piece as Tchaikovsky intended it.
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