Russian Tsar Era Classics — The Queen of Spades, by Alexander Pushkin
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The second episode of the Russian Tsar Era Classics shelf. Alexander Pushkin's celebrated tale of obsession — the engineer Hermann, the old Countess who is said to know the secret of three winning cards, and her young ward Lizaveta — told complete in a multi-voice dramatized performance.
In this episode:
00:00 — Opening theme and introduction
0:39 — Chapter One
10:03 — Chapter Two
28:09 — Chapter Three
46:16 — Chapter Four
56:06 — Chapter Five
1:03:18 — Chapter Six
1:12:48 — Conclusion
The complete tale is told here — all six chapters and the conclusion, nothing cut and nothing softened, exactly as Pushkin wrote it in 1834: the night visit to the Countess's bedroom, her death of fright, the three cards named from beyond the grave, and the queen of spades who winks at the faro table.
Performed by the KacheliTV cast — narrated by Morgana; Bruno as Hermann; Madame de Pamplemousse as the Countess; Violetta as Lizaveta Ivanovna; Felix as Tomsky; Silas as Chekalinsky; Orson as Narumov; Amos, Benedetto, Scratch and Lulu in the supporting voices.
Music: "Cypress in the Soil" — it opens the episode, returns briefly between the chapters, and closes it; the performance itself is heard over silence, with no music under the words. Sound effects are real recordings from a licensed library, credited as follows: "Grandfather Clock Ticking.ogg" by Jud McCranie, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
"The Queen of Spades" («Пиковая дама») by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799–1837), first published in 1834 — public domain. Fresh English translation made in-house for KacheliTV from the Russian text at ilibrary.ru. An original tipping disclosure in our own words plays inside this episode, at a random position, in one of our own voices.
KacheliTV — the world's classics and folk tales in English, gathered tale by tale into one library.
