by Piotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky from a story by Pushkin
seen by live streaming from Covent Garden on 22 January 2019
Stefan Herheim directs and Antonio Pappano conducts a new production of Tchaikovsky's 1893 opera based on a story about gambling by Alexander Pushkin, with Sergey Polyakov as Gherman, Vladimir Stoyanov as Prince Yeletsky, Felicity Palmer as the Countess and Eva-Maria Westbroek as Liza. The production is designed by Philipp Fürhoffer.
The original story, which concerns the greed of the soldier Herman who is determined to wrest the secret of winning at cards from an old Countess, is here complicated by adding details of a love story in which two characters, Gherman (the Herman figure) and Prince Yelestsky (newly introduced in the opera version) both love Liza, the young companion of the Countess in the story, promoted to being her granddaughter in the opera.
