Karita Mattila returns as Lisa in ‘Queen of Spades’
The alienation of Gherman—paradigm of 19th-century Russian literature’s “superfluous man”—dominates the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Tchaikovsky’s 1890 The Queen of Spades. Designed by Mark Thompson, a giant picture frame forms an interior proscenium. Gherman frequently stands outside it, peering in at the society with which he’s increasingly at odds. First shown in 1995, Elijah Moshinsky’s production was treated to gripping performances this season, so much so that after I went last week I decided to go a second time.
Tamara Mumford and Karita Mattila in Queen of Spades / Photo by Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera
It is late-18th Century St. Petersburg, and Catherine the Great is on the throne (she makes a cameo appearance in Act 2). Officer Gherman has developed an obsessive love for Lisa, already engaged to Prince Yeletsky. But Gherman’s passion is outweighed by his determination to learn the invincible card secret that her grandmother reputedly possesses.
Karita Mattila sang Lisa in the original premiere of this production, but was singing it here for the first time since then. Naturally she doesn’t sound exactly the same as she did fifteen years ago. She is so skilled and so expressive that it can seem no more than the emotion of the moment that causes her voice to grow husky. But yes, its surface is now less smooth than before and last week the soprano was banking her firepower at times. Vocal conservation didn’t, however, preclude some thrilling fortissimos in her duets with Gherman, where her voice could take sustenance from his. And the fringe benefit of conservation was meticulous control of softer dynamics. Lisa is an ostensibly lyric role that really requires the heft of a dramatic soprano: Mattila’s was a consummate negotiation between different tonal densities and textures.
Mattila is tall, and here was taller still, wearing a beehive wig of piled-up ringlets. She was vulnerable without seeming fragile—in the scenes of public life, regal enough to be almost a younger version of the Countess herself. Mattila has a taste not so much for excess as for strategic outrageousness. She fell to her knees confessing to herself the illicit passion she harbors for Gherman, then touched her head practically back to the floor in a paroxysm of near-orgasmic surrender. She does these things so persuasively that critical judgment is all but suspended; She knows when and how often to insert this kind of acting statement.
Vladimir Galouzine is also a veteran on the opera stage, yet I thought he was even better last week than when I’d heard him as Gherman at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky five years ago. There is hysteria in the orchestral sounds enveloping Gherman, and invariably one waits to hear how the tenor will match it tonally. Since bawl is the bane of the operative tenor’s expression, any tenor’s voice is often poised on a fine line of detonation. Russian tenors have a uniquely barbaric full-throttle, which Galouzine for the most part employed appropriately. However at the first performance, he was doing some unequivocal yelling during his first scene. That was more a question, I think, of him trying to find the measure of the house’s vast dimensions. His voice has a siltier, sootier sound than years ago, but as with Mattila, the abrasions of age have added expressive coloration. His lower registers were dark and gravely, the sound compellingly big and vibrant. He wallowed uncompromisingly in the mire of Gherman’s disaffection and self-pity.
A relic from a vanished era, the Countess is both lost in the peripheral shadows as well as being the perpetual pivot point of the opera’s three acts. Her infirmity is a polar contrast to Gherman’s increasingly feverish cathexis. Vocal range is nothing; vocal inflection counts for all in this role, so much so that we often hear the Countess’s dilapidation evoked by a soprano or mezzo whose tone has itself suffered some ravagement over time. That’s not quite the case with mezzo Dolora Zajick, this year’s Countess. While hers isn’t a young voice—she made her Met debut in 1988—she can still pull her registers together. Here her tone was healthy, but she was still able to evoke not only the tyranny but the defenselessness of the aged dowager, the flickering world of nostalgia into which she descends at bedtime.
In this scene, conductor Andris Nelsons spirited drowsy quietude from the pit to the stage in the most haunted and haunting manner. Throughout the evening, Nelsons had no fear of exploring to their logical conclusion the macabre extremes in this opera. There was in fact not a single weak link in this production. Among the leads, Alexei Markov’s Tomsky, whose act one ballad is what tips off Gherman to the Countess’s secret, was the best thing that this baritone has done here since his house debut in 2007. Mezzo Tamara Mumford was plummy and idiomatic as Lisa’s often-vocalizing friend Pauline. It would be hard to imagine a more beautiful baritone than Peter Mattei’s or a more beautiful delivery of Yeletsky’s major moment, “Ya vas lyublyu,” his avowal to Lisa of his love as well as his heartbreak that her affection seem to be slipping through his fingers.
On Saturday afternoon, the season’s final performance of The Queen of Spades at the Metropolitan Opera will also be broadcast live by radio.
Read more of Joel Lobenthal’s writing at of lobenthal.com
