(Credit: W. Hoesl)

Lise Davidsen as the headliner in Tchaikovsky’s “Pique Dame” at the Munich Opera Festival is an apt addition. It is a production full of theatrical effects created by Benedict Andrews with full-screen projections of Lisa in various enticing poses, including cars serving as platforms for singers and chorus-women, a bleacher-filled chorus partially masked, and G-string quasi-strippers.

There is also a Countess who doffs her wig to go bald-pated with a quartet of lookalikes spinning around a symbolic pool, and a gun that appears in almost every scene and finally kills one of the countess lookalikes. Or was it the Countess who turned up dead minutes later? These effects, along with exquisite singing, orchestral richness, soaring Tchaikovsky melodies, and some fine acting, made this performance a plus on the summer opera circuit.

Drawn from Alexander Pushkin’s gothic story of 1834, Tchaikovsky’s brother, Modest, wrote the libretto and successfully intertwined this story of obsession. Hermann, sung by tenor Mikhail Pirogov, who replaced American tenor Brandon Jovanovich, dramatized his obsession for Lisa, “beautiful angel”, and was determined to kill himself if he couldn’t “have her.” Then, he revealed his obsession for gambling, one linked to the other, together they served as the main subject of the plot. Obsession. Here was a man built on this one trait. Everything he did derived from fixation, finally leading to his exhaustion and death on a grand scale. When his beloved Lisa ran her hand over his dead body, we shared her grief. Only during moments, like the bleacher scene, did he seem capable of stepping beyond such contraction, and becoming a man and a lover to be reckoned with. But this didn’t last. Almost immediately, he collapsed back into his personal prison.

As Lisa, soprano Lise Davidsen filled the house with her powerful and lustrous voice from the outset. Moving around the stage like a large doll in each scene, wearing a bold but simple colorful dress, she conveyed an otherworldly presence that coupled well with Hermann. First, she rejected him. Then, she drew toward him, continuing to play a line between dream and fantasy. All the time, she gave out an unforgettable, rich, ever-unfolding and expanding sound. It was hard to think in the presence of it.

And yet, she was unpretentious, convincing and heart-felt. Her commitment to each vocal and scenic moment was total and her success in reaching Hermann and all the audience remained complete. Her action seemed neither all real nor all fantasy. Rather, she was a conjuration of Hermann and no doubt Tchaikovsky’s vision, a wished-for-angelic-beloved who would transform the ordinary into the quasi-divine. It was as if her “not knowing what to do with her feelings” showed her exactly what to do. To be real and unpredictable, as a human being and to come through changeability with charm and appeal. She remained intensely likable, regardless of her varying judgments and choices.

Roman Burdenko as Count Tomsky, Boris Pinkhasovich as Yeletsky, David Alegret as Chekalinsky, and Bálint Szabó as Surin were strong additions to the cast, singing with ardor and gusto. Violeta Urmana as the Countess was also a solid addition to this production. Polina, sung by Victoria Karkacheva, provided a moving and lively partnering to Davidsen’s Lisa. The Countess provided not only a rich palette of vocal sound, color and wealth of feeling and idea, she brought in another dimension that was vivid and forceful. For instance, when she doffed her wig following the injection her assistant gave her, suddenly it seemed as though another layer of the operatic story had yet to be told. She seemed hardly to be “just Lise’s grandmother.” It was hard to see her “die.”

Polina’s lovely and soulful voice counterpointed in duet with Lisa, although it was odd that she seemed to suddenly appear and be in close contact with Lisa without any clear context. This was somewhat characteristic of the early scenes in the production, as if context had already been established and that the audience was supposed to know it all as things occurred. In fact, it took a while for this to happen, and only when it did, did it seem the opera would become not only cohesive but moving. As such, the relationship between the obsessive Hermann and Lisa became the lynchpin for the overall production as well as a key point of the opera itself.

The chorus did an admirable job, singing with gusto and accuracy. They provided a necessary complement to the intense moments that occurred between the main couple and the challenges between the Countess and Hermann, and herself.