Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Neil Shicoff lurched to the stage, hair awry, mad of eye.

He's Hermann, Tchaikovsky's gambling loser, in a new production of ``Pique Dame,'' at the Vienna Staatsoper directed by Vera Nemirova.

Shicoff's fading vocal resources leave him little option but to act and act some more. An announced indisposition didn't help matters.

Fortunately, the tenor was only one of many elements in a largely successful evening. Nemirova's staging concept works well, though I'd seen a good deal of it in Riga already, where Andrejs Zagars, intendant of the Latvian National Opera, came up with the notion of setting the story in a crumbling St. Petersburg mansion in modern times. The old Countess returns with her suitcase and granddaughter to reclaim the ancestral home.

Nemirova has added a few ideas -- the Countess brings builders in hard hats along with the suitcases, and the mansion is being used as an orphanage when she arrives -- yet a high number of details are identical.

In the pit, Seiji Ozawa emphasized beauty of tone at the expense of thrill or tension. The Viennese orchestra plays well enough for him, though there were a number of shakily coordinated moments.

Compelling Hysteria

Thank heavens for the prompter who was in good voice, often starting the tenor off on phrases he hadn't remembered. Martina Serafin took a lyrical approach to the role of the seduced and abandoned Lisa, managing the lighter passages with grace and polish, but tending toward shrill hysteria in the more dramatic moments. Still, her fraught yet strongly dramatic presence and sheer staying power proved compelling.

Anja Silja flung herself into the role of the aging Countess, still so smolderingly sexy on her deathbed that Hermann's fascination with her and her gambling secret took on more physical dimensions than usual. The legendary diva made up for lack of vocal substance with truckloads of charisma. Her final posthumous appearance was suitably chilling.

``Pique Dame'' is at the Wiener Staatsoper through Nov. 17 and returns in June 2008. For more information, go to http://www.wiener-staatsoper.at.

(Shirley Apthorp is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

Last Updated: October 30, 2007 04:55 EDT