When details of star soprano Anna Netrebko’s lawsuit against the Metropolitan Opera surfaced, one of the projects planned for her was a revival of Tchaikovsky’s searing tragedy Queen of Spades. After she became soprano non grata at the Met in response to the Ukraine war and her support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, several Netrebko plans were dropped, while others, like new productions of Lohengrin and La Forza del Destino, proceeded with other sopranos.
But the company decided to proceed with Queen of Spades starring sonya yoncheva, another marquee name, as Lisa, while Netrebko’s first stab at the opera has been rescheduled for late June at the Vienna Staatsoper alongside her now ex-husband Yusif Eyvasov. After his Met success as Hermann in 2019, Eyvasov would surely have repeated it in 2025, so the Met had to also find a new Hermann: a task that proved to be inordinately complicated.
The opera’s plot, based on a novella by Pushkin, revolves around soldier Hermann’s reckless quest to uncover the magical three cards that will guarantee his gambling success. The Met’s plans to put its Queen of Spades back on stage ultimately involved three tenors. When this spring’s revival was announced in February 2024, American Brian Jagde was Hermann, a new role for him. When I asked him about it last year, he offered that “Hermann is a role I feel I can really sink my teeth into and… it presents challenges I feel I’m now ready for in my development as an artist.”
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However, less than a month before the premiere, Jagde withdrew, later revealing that he hadn’t had sufficient time to prepare for the role. The opera company then summoned Brandon Jovanovich, who had starred in a new production of Queen of Spades just last season at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera, to take over. Then, the day before the dress rehearsal, the Met announced that Jovanovich would be replaced by Armenian tenor Arsen Soghomonyan.
A veteran Hermann, Soghomonyan amply demonstrated in his hastily arranged Met debut that he has the powerful tenor needed. But perhaps nerves or a lack of rehearsal caused him to crack at several crucial points. No doubt embarrassed by those mishaps, the tenor appeared for his solo bow, brandishing the pistol he used to “kill himself” minutes earlier. Acknowledging the enthusiastic applause, he pointed it to his temple with a shrug of apology.
In another turn of the opera world merry-go-round, Soghomonyan had to leave Turandot at the Greek National Opera to take on his surprise Met duties. He was replaced in Athens as Calaf by Jagde whose website still lists Hermann on his schedule at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper for late June.
A blunt actor, Soghomonyan embodied Hermann’s distracted obsession effectively and otherwise delivered his increasingly desperate music with burning intensity. Aside from the unfortunate cracks, he fervently hurled potent high notes into the packed house.
He and Yoncheva manifested a chilly chemistry, emphasizing that Hermann is involved with Lisa primarily to gain access to the Countess, her grandmother, to learn the old woman’s secret of the three cards. Absent from the Met since her very problematic turn in 2023 as Bellini’s Norma, the Bulgarian soprano gave us a fiercely emotional Lisa—one as possessed by her self-destructive passions as Hermann was by his gambling addiction. Her instrument has grown significantly, and she flooded the Met with rich tone in her pair of tortured arias. Her top notes can shade sharp and worn, but they were in firmer shape than they had been in Norma. Clearly, Tchaikovsky brings out the best in Yoncheva, as she had shown in Iolanta at the Met in 2019. She sounded considerably better at the premiere than she does in the dress rehearsal video the Met posted.
One of the highlights of Elijah Moshinsky’s vivid production when it premiered in 1995 was Leonie Rysanek’s gripping portrayal of the old Countess, her final role with a company that adored her. Her renowned flamboyance embraced Moshinsky’s most breathtaking moment: after Hermann has invaded the Countess’s bedroom and scared her to death, her ghost appears to reveal to him the secret of the cards: Three! Seven! Ace! Moshinsky has the Countess, now clad in infernal red, noisily break through the floor of the soldier’s quarters. Rysanek was genuinely frightening, but this season’s Violeta Urmana failed to make much of her striking entrance. In her earlier appearances, Urmana looked smashing in Mark Thompson’s sumptuous gowns but appeared too proudly erect for the frail noblewoman so easily frightened to death by the home invader. However, Urmana brought a haunting vulnerability to her nostalgic Grétry aria that she and conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson took very slowly.
The 1995 premiere also featured the Met debut of Dmitri Hvorostovsky in his signature role of Prince Yeletsky. The character has little to do beyond sing a ravishing aria proclaiming his love for Lisa. Igor Golovatenko, who made his Met debut as Yeletsky in 2019, repeated the role with less success this time. Though he was in better voice than he had been in the fall as a muted di Luna in Il Trovatore, his aria this time was performed without much tenderness or legato. One wished that he had traded places with Alexey Markov, the Met’s Tomsky of choice since 2011, who was in securely ringing voice this season and would have made a more fluent Yeletsky.
Maria Baranova found Pauline’s plaintive aria much more congenial than she had the rabble-rousing of Preziosilla in La Forza del Destino last season. She doubled as a dashing Daphnis in the enchanting second-act Mozartian pastorale in which she vied with Markov’s hearty Plutus for the affections of Ann-Kathrin Niemczk’s lovely Chloë. Chad Shelton stood out as Tchekalinsky, sounding as if he might have easily taken over as the Met’s fourth Hermann!
Conductor Wilson made an impressive debut in 2022, leading Shostakovich’s scorchingly satiric Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. She ably negotiated the score’s extremes of Tchaikovsky’s score from Hermann’s fiery outbursts to the beguiling enchantments of the pastorale. Very late in a long season, the company’s orchestra and chorus remained for Wilson on top of their game. If her Queen of Spades hadn’t completely jelled at its fraught premiere, it will surely improve by the fifth performance, which will be the Met’s final Saturday matinee broadcast on 7 June.