Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | The Queen of Spades (Pique Dame)

The young soprano Lise Davidsen scored a successful debut at the Met, with impressive support by conductor Vasily Petrenko, also making a debut, led a memorable revival of Pique Dame. 

Herheim places the composer at the centre of his opera in a staging that's clever and erudite but somewhat cold; musical performances are mixed.

Mariss Jansons and the Vienna Philharmonic do the real storytelling as Hans Neuenfels' staging underwhelms.

This was more stadium rock than stuffy opera house, lighting as ‘metaphor made real’ as the lovers were – literally – star-struck, blinded by love.

Oper Stuttgart’s new production of The Queen of Spades (Pique-Dame) pushes a directorial tendency to update opera to a modern setting to an extreme.

This double cast, nine-day revival of Vadim Milkov's staging of Pique Dame offers a relatively straight reading of Tchaikovsky's opera about the obsessive Pushkin-based character Herman. Embracing the opera's choral and dance passages, spectacle and pageantry are paramount; the drama's surreal and more nuanced dimensions could have been better profiled.

Tchaikovsky's High Gothic opera about gambling obsessions is worth seeing for a first class staging, albeit with a mixed musical performance.

The role of the outsider struck a chord with Tchaikovsky, whose homosexuality alienated him from society. Stefan Herheim takes that identification as the central idea in his remarkable new production at Dutch National Opera.

David Alden’s muddled clichés failed to convince all the time, but Edward Gardner steered us through a thrilling musical account of Tchaikovsky’s terrific opera.

The latest production of Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia gave the audience lots to marvel at musically – beautiful composition and gorgeous voices.

I have always been skeptical of concert performances of operas. Operas are written to be acted, and the staging is needed to complement the music. This is what I thought before I saw this performance of Ashkenazy conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney Children’s Choir in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.

Queen of Spades began life as a sharp little ghost story by Alexander Pushkin, quite different in tone and spirit from the melodramatic adaptation by Modest Tchaikovsky, who wrote the libretto for his composer brother.

Pour cette nouvelle production du célèbre opéra de Tchaïkovsky, l'Opéra national du Rhin a fait appel à la baguette de Marko Letonja et à la mise en scène de Robert Carsen.