The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) is presenting Tchaikovsky’s opera-in-concert entitled Queen of Spades at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas (DFP) in KLCC, this Saturday (Jan 26) at 8.30pm, Sunday at 3pm, and on Jan 29 at 8.30pm.
Queen of Spades follows closely behind Eugene Onegin as the best known of Tchaikovsky’s opera music, providing an excellent platform to proclaim the composer’s genius.
Expect to be drawn into a wealth of wonderful melodies and dramatic intensity via vividly-drawn characters by renowned singers such as Eduard Martynyuk, Tatiana Pavlovskaya, Pavel Yankovsky, and Kirill Zharovin.
Other performers include Irina Shishkova, Anna Kiknadze, Mikhail Kolelishvili, Alexander Mikhaylov, and local choir group Dithyrambic Singers.
This Tchaikovsky’s penultimate opera is based on a short 1833 novel by Alexander Pushkin, one of Russia’s greatest authors.
In the late 1880s, the director of Imperial Theatres decided to commission three operas to promote Russian opera.
Tchaikovsky composed the music in 1890 in Florence for the vocal score and in Rome for its orchestration before he completed it back in Russia.
This score of melancholy nostalgia and despair was presented in December that year in St Petersburg to great acclaim and went on to become his second, as aforementioned, most popular opera today.
The MPO will be led by Russian conductor Stanislav Kochanovsky in the concerts, which will last two hours, including an interval.
For more, visit the MPO website.
