Domingo Gambles, and Wins, on ‘Queen of Spades’

Tuesday night Placido Domingo had one of the strangest jobs in show business.

On stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion he was enacting a role he has taken on lately, that of Herman in Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades.” The character, from a Pushkin short story, is obsessed, tormented, self-destructive, a gambler willing to stop at nothing to learn the secret of three cards.

Domingo’s other new role, also taken up late in the famed tenor’s career, is that of artistic director of the Los Angeles Opera. Tuesday night opened the first season that he has planned.

This Domingo is also a gambler, having pronounced a grand vision for the company, and where he will stop nobody knows. As driven as Herman, perhaps, but lacking the inner demons, this Domingo appears to be full of ardent enthusiasm, ready to press ahead, ever upbeat, absolutely confident.

If Domingo has, in fact, hidden inner demons, that would mean that he is a magnificent actor. And were he that great an actor, he would surely have been a more thorough one in “Queen of Spades,” as well.

The Domingo on stage in this new production, directed by the German designer Gottfried Pilz, sang with ardor, his voice firm and fresh. He threw himself into the role with characteristic enthusiasm and passion. Nobody can believe he is 60. And while the fervor in his singing can seem all-purpose, audiences find it irresistible.

What made “Queen of Spades” significant Tuesday night, however, was that little surrounding Domingo was what we have been accustomed to at Los Angeles Opera. One glaring lack in the company’s repertory has been Russian opera, so Domingo has enticed Russia’s greatest living conductor, Valery Gergiev, to make annual visits. And he brought a dramatic intensity to the performance.

Gergiev conducts the orchestra from the bottom up, building sonic support in the deep brass and strings, and the sheer power of this sound, enhanced by highly expressive playing in the upper strings and winds, was profoundly emotional. The results he achieved with the opera orchestra were astonishing after only a week’s work, but they were also spotty. And it will be a challenge to maintain the trademark Gergiev tension, since he remains with the production only through Monday (Gianandrea Noseda takes over). Domingo also drops out, after Sept. 16, to be replaced by the leading Kirov tenor, Gegam Grigorian.

Most of the cast were top-ranking Russian singers, long associated with Tchaikovsky’s opera, and longtime colleagues of Gergiev. This surely explains his ability to accomplish so much so quickly. And it allowed a Russian-starved company a rare chance to bask in genuine Russian singing. Galina Gorchakova, one the Kirov’s finest sopranos, was a powerful, luminous Lisa. Tomsky and Yeletsky were fluidly, warmly sung by baritones Sergei Leiferkus and Vladimir Chernov, respectively.

As the Countess with the three-card secret, Elena Obraztsova followed in the tradition of singers late in their careers having a final flamboyant fling with the role and came close to stealing the show, which is nothing new for her.

As he likes to do, Domingo gave a leading role to one of his Operalia winners, Susanna Poretsky, who was a dusky, impressive Pauline. A few company regulars were on hand, as well, Jonathan Mack (Tchekalinsky) and Suzanna Guzman (the Governess).

There was, however, little sense of the kind of ensemble company that marked some of the best of the Peter Hemming years. Rather this was an evening of visiting seasoned professionals coming in and doing what they always do.

And Pilz’s production was tailor-made for just such an occasion. He offered a unit set of a grand Russian ballroom and placed all the action in it, from the Summer Garden with its sudden thunderstorm, to the gaming tables. The room’s precipitous tilt presumably served as a symbol of Herman’s skewered psyche. Pilz, however, demonstrated no compelling dramatic function for the ballroom.

In writing the opera, Tchaikovsky asked his brother Modest (the librettist) to move the action back a century, to the early 18th, to allow him some Mozartean touches. Pilz moved up the action to Tchaikovsky’s time, the late 19th century, but for no apparent reason. And he appeared to leave the singers pretty much to their own standard-issue dramatic devices.

Nothing was embarrassing (well, there was a laugh or two where there shouldn’t be), but the drama was more effectively played in the music than on the stage. Not surprisingly, the ballroom worked best for the ballroom scene, and Pilz was most creative in his work with the chorus, eager adults and eager children.

Eager too are we, the audience. This “Queen of Spades” is a tantalizing glimpse of the future for Los Angeles Opera, but only that. Already Domingo has made good in his promise to bring something new. Yet it is also a typical example of Domingo’s peripatetic professionalism, dropping in with some of the best talent the opera world has to offer rather than actually creating something that is theatrically original and meaningful from the bottom up.

Then again, the season, and the era, has just begun.

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“Queen of Spades” repeats Friday, Monday, next Thursday, Sept. 19 and 25 at 7:30 p.m., Sept 16 and 22 at 2 p.m. $30-$165, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. (213) 972-8001.

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See the Opera

View a scene rom “The Queen of Spades” on the Los Angeles Times Web site at: https://www.calendarlive.com/spades.