“Sonya & Co.,” by Jay Nordlinger

“Sonya & Co.,” by Jay Nordlinger

In 2018, Mariss Jansons, the late, great Latvian, conducted The Queen of Spades, Tchaikovsky’s opera, at the Salzburg Festival. In an interview before an audience, I remarked to him that, in the West, Eugene Onegin is the No. 1 Tchaikovsky opera and The Queen of Spades the No. 2. Jansons said that he could not understand that. He preferred The Queen of Spades. He said it belonged among the ten greatest operas. I later wrote, “I don’t have this v…