Pique Dame

As a penniless officer the ambitious Hermann is a misfit amongst the nobles and military men of wealthy society. His inferiority has been all the more painful since he fell in love with Lisa, Prince Yeletsky’s fiancée. Hermann is prepared to go to extremes in his desperate desire to overcome all obstacles and win Lisa – and with her acceptance in the circles of high society. When he hears the rumour that Lisa’s grandmother, who was famous in her day as the “Venus of Moscow”, knows a combination of cards that will guarantee success at the gambling table, he forces his way into the elderly Countess’s quarters in order to elicit the secret from her. But the night he tries to blackmail her, she dies…
With his ‘Queen of Spades’ Peter I. Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) transforms Alexander Pushkin’s eponymous novella into an opulent outsider drama that the successful American director Lydia Steier presents against the backdrop of America in the 50s.