Russian literature is unimaginable without Pushkin. It feeds on Pushkin, it breathes Pushkin. During his brief life – he died at the age of 38 – he produced a torrent of the most wonderful poems, plays and stories. Pushkin wrote the novella The Queen of Spades in 1833 in the course of a few days and “in a cold fury” – brief, sharply accentuated and focused on psychology. More than 50 years later, Tchaikovsky turned to this tale for an opera. Mariss Jansons conducts the Vienna Philharmonic, Hans Neuenfels directs Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades at the Großes Festspielhaus. Hanna Schwarz appears as the Countess. Evgenia Muraveva sings Lisa, Brandon Jovanovich is Herman, Vladislav Sulimsky appears as Count Tomsky / Plutus, and Igor Golovatenko is Prince Yelezky. "