Otkuda eti slyozy (The Queen of Spades (Pique Dame))

Tchaikovsky composed The Queen of Spades in Florence between January and March 1890, working from a libretto by his brother Modest and finishing the draft in forty-four days. Pushkin's story is short and ironic; the brothers moved it back to the eighteenth century, gave Liza a fate she does not have in the original, and turned the Countess's secret into something closer to the supernatural. The premiere took place at the Mariinsky Theatre on 19 December 1890. Tchaikovsky wrote pastiche numbers in period style and set them against music of a directness he had not used in opera before.