TCHAIKOVSKY- Pique Dame, Paris Opera National 2005 HASMIK PAPIAN

La Dame de Pique/Пиковая дама Hermann – Vladimir Galouzine Lisa – Hasmik Papian Countess – Irina Bogatcheva Count Tomsky – Nikolai Putilin Prince Yeletsky – Ludovic Tézier Polina – Christianne Stotijn Chekalinsky – Vsevolod Grivnov Surin – Sergei Stilmachenko Macha – Irina Tchistjakova La Maître de cérémonie - Robert Catania Tchaplintski - Grzegorz Staskiewicz Narumov - Slawomir Szichowiak Gennadi Rozhdestvensky-conductor It took Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky only 44 days to write the score of THE QUEEN OF SPADES. ‘It seems to me that this is my best work ever’, writes the composer once the score is finished. After EUGENE ONEGIN, THE QUEEN OF SPADES is Tchaikovsky’s second adaptation of a text by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. It is Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest who reworks Pushkin’s short story into a libretto. Liza loves Herman, a young officer. But the latter wants to draw a secret from her grandmother, the old Countess: How is it that she is such a successful gambler? Herman confronts her and forces her to reveal her secret, menacing her with a revolver. The Countess dies from the shock. It is her ghost that later appears before the young officer and gives away the fatal sequence of cards: three, seven, ace…