The opera “The Queen of Spades” was based on the novel by Alexander Pushkin. It is an example of a successful collaboration between the Tchaikovsky brothers, composer Pyotr Ilyich and writer Modest Ilyich.

Modest Tchaikovsky was a translator who was fluent in four European languages and a well-known playwright, opera and ballet librettist. For example, Marius Petipa asked for his help, when working on fantastic ballets together with the composer Minkus. Among his translations are Shakespeare’s sonnets and “Richard II”, poems by the Italian poet Giosuè Carducci and treatises by the German philosopher Kuno Fischer, texts of Bach cantatas and “A New Biography of Mozart” by Alexander Ulybyshev, originally written in French.

The idea of staging an opera on the plot of “The Queen of Spades” at the Mariinsky Theater probably belonged to the director of the Imperial Theaters Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky. In October 1887, Vsevolozhsky and Tchaikovsky discussed the idea for the first time, but the composer refused.

Over time, Tchaikovsky’s attitude to the plot changed, as can be read in one of his letters from 1890:

Modest Tchaikovsky did not simply transform the prose of Alexander Pushkin into a poetic form and changed the period to the 18th century (“the era of Catherine II”). The Tchaikovsky brothers introduced both a melodramatic element and a social subtext into the plot of the “three cards”. In the opera, Herman is not a calculating and ambitious player with the “soul of Mephistopheles”, but a passionately loving person. Liza has been transformed from a poor ward into a granddaughter of an old countess. She is a bride in the opera; her fiancé, unlike the poor officer Herman, is a noble and rich Prince Yeletsky.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky began work on the opera in January 1890 in Florence. The entire score was completed by June 8 of the same year.

The premiere was a great success. It took place in December 1890 at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, conducted by Eduard Napravnik.