On New Year’s Eve, I was sad and alone. I’d recently lost an item of some sentimental value, and various plans had changed at the last minute, leaving me scrambling, so what do you do with a happy holiday that’s just had the life sucked out of it?

One thing you can do is mix a double Manhattan, (a bit too much for me personally) and settle in with the dog for three hours of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.

Well, that’s quite a dense story, Pyotr and brother Modest! I was never sure the Countess was going to come through for Herman, myself, but after Act 1, I wasn’t tracking the plot very carefully.

Not totally clear on the music, either, or how they managed so many outdoor scenes, or, really, anything else. Sure, I watched the whole thing, but a bit under the influence of bourbon and vermouth.

Nice job, Barcelona! Happy New Year! Time to sleep.

So then, what do we know about what Tchaikovsky has to offer, outside of Eugene Onegin? Not a lot, given the limitations of the New Year’s experience, so let’s take a look at Frankfurt’s 2022 The Enchantress. Once again, a plot full of surprises, a diverse cast of characters, and music so grand and heavy that you kind of agree with the Russian music stereotype.

It’s nearly three and a half hours long, and Tchaikovsky and his librettist Shpazhinsky have put together a vast and detailed story that is so compelling, you might once again forget to pay attention to the music, even without four ounces of hard liquor.

I tried, but very little of the music stood out.

There is one terrific solo at the beginning where the young, confident woman who runs the inn sings to everyone about the grandeur of their valley. Minor key, haunting, sad music, because the local politics are threatening, but Kuma and her friends do like their town on the Oka River. This “Arioso” is worth listening to a couple of times, and Frankfurt had the Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian handling the song, and the role, with confidence.

The rest of the time, I was captivated with the development of a very risky gamble by the prince, who slips out on his wife and their grown son, to drink with Kuma the innkeeper and try for something a little closer. But the prince is supposed to be pushing his disinterested son on Kuma, not messing with her himself. And Kuma’s smarter than the prince, so there’s a lot of tension in the air, but not much enchantment.

The prince’s wife smells a rat, and decides that young Kuma’s the one at fault, and the whole thing goes down in a tragic bloody mess.

Like The Queen of Spades, this is an opera to watch mainly for the extremely well-crafted story. Sure, the music goes along with it, but if you’re like me, you don’t go home singing the chorus pieces; instead you are wondering whether the innkeeper, her trusted friends, the prince, the son, the betrayed princess, or the house-servants might have at some point found a way to avoid the final crisis.

For music and spiritual uplift, you want to experience Tchaikovsky’s lovely (and far shorter) Iolanta. I did, and it’s excellent.