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John HarrisonUniversity of Northern Colorado
Music by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky after the story by Alexander Pushkin
Telecast September 8, 1999
based on performances in April 1999
Cast:
Gherman Placido Domingo
Lisa Galina Gorchakova
Countess Elisabeth Söderström
Yeletsky Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Pauline (Daphnis) Olga Borodina
Tomsky (Plutus) Nikolai Putilin
Chloë Olga Trifonova
Tchekalinsky Ronald Naldi
Surin Julien Robbins
Governess Irina Bogatcheva
Masha Heidi Skok
Master of Ceremonies Matthew Polenzani
Catherine the Great Inga Rappaport
Chaplitsky Mark Schowalter
Narumov Leroy Lehr
Conductor Valery Gergiev
Director Elijah Moshinsky
Designer Mark Thompson
Lighting Paul Pyant
Television Director Brian Large
p.37
Sumptuous costumes, elegant furnishings, a frequently crowded stage and a golden picture frame remind the viewer of the opulence of this Met production, new in 1995. One 1995 reviewer found the frame alienating, but the video viewers see little of it because the camera focuses inside it so much of the time. It provides an awkward barrier when Lisa has to climb over it to find the embankment from which to jump to her death. Her disappearance in the murk behind the Met frame proves disappointing, particularly in comparison to the Glyndebourne video (1992). In it superior lighting provides a watery shimmer on the wall and the staging an opening at the back from which she can hurtle down out of view.
Comparing the Met video to Glyndebourne's will reveal the strength and weakness in both excellent productions. The Glyndebourne set consists of a white-walled box at crooked angles with Jackson-Pollock-like black squiggles radiating from an opening or wall in the rear. The strange angles of the walls and any dividers and doors help keep the viewer off balance. Those weird walls, squiggles and the shadows on them during a few intense scenes suggest the German expressionistic film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and some of its deranged and terrified characters. That the film ends at an insane asylum duplicates the fate of Gherman in Pushkin's story. Both have become the basis of a recent shared production of The Queen of Spades, set in a psychiatric institution: Amsterdam (1998) and Florence (1999).
Glyndebourne goes no further than its expressionistic sets and occasional piece of furniture, one or two even attached to the ceiling...