Fairy tale? Yes. And they all lived happily ever after? No. In fact a steady slide into horror, set running by one mad decision (Rusalka's), and driven by selfish and uncaring behaviour (the humans). The music is great though.
Singing to the Moon. From left: Renée Fleming, Christine Opolais (same Met, different productions), and Camilla Nylund (ROH Covent Garden).
The opera started as a libretto looking for a composer, based on a Slavic fairy tale, based in turn on The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen (though some try to deny that). It hit the stage in Prague in 1901 and was an instant and continuing success - unlike Dvorak's nine other operas. Dvorak was 60 at the time and would live only another three years. Read about Antonin Dvorak and his amazing musical output here. You can find the plot and performance history here.
The story is built around an impossible love - common enough in opera - in this case by somebody otherworldly for a human. There's also the line about the mysterious person (here the rusalka, tr. water nymph) whose name and provenance must not be made known. Think Lohengrin, Calaf, and maybe Melisande in opera, Rumpelstiltskin in folklore. In the rusalka's case it was guaranteed by muteness, the price of becoming human. And always, great calamities ensue from refusing to reveal your name and your past. Behind most fairy tales and myths lie deep themes and messages; and Rusalka is no exception. (Why does The Emperor's New Clothes get mentioned so often by political analysts?)
Dvorak wrote at a time of Czech nationalist fervour for throwing off the Austrian yoke, but unlike Rossini's William Tell it is not a nationalist story. Though once you hear a few bars of this glorious music you realise it is very different from Italian, French and German operatic styles.
There have been four extraordinary productions lately. A new one from the New York Met, with Christine Opolais as Rusalka. New Republic has an intriguing discussion of it and the trophy wife. Anthony Tommasini has a deep review of the opera's production and its dark themes in the New York Times. It includes a clip of Opolais singing the "Song to the Moon", one of the most famous and hauntingly beautiful arias in the entire canon of opera. It has despite its lyric beauty an unsettled and ominous flavour to it. Find many more top sopranos having a go at it on YouTube.
Our production is also from the Met, but earlier (2014, originally performed in 1993). In the title role is lyric soprano Renée Fleming who had made the role her own and famous through a long career. The Prince is tenor Piotr Beczala. Bass John Relyea plays the water gnome Vodnik, Rusalka's torn father. The witch Jezibaba, with the wisdom of two worlds and care for neither, is mezzo Dolora Zajick. The Met's orchestra is conducted by the brilliant Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin , who is now musical director of the Met. His rendering was much praised in an otherwise cool-to-cold review in the Observer - especially cool about Ms Fleming's "botoxed" performance.
But undoubtedly the most famous (er, notorious) production is from Salzburg in 2008, where it was roundly booed. ROH Covent Garden then staged it, to more boos. The Telegraph praises the singers but is vicious about the production. Rupert Christiansen writes 'A hot-air filled programme note written by [the producer] sets the tone. “The failure of mere corporeality denounces the rhetoric of a society that has severed its relationship with its Other." ... Rather than allowing for ambiguity or poetic suggestiveness, they present an “alienating” interpretation which seeks to shock, baffle and challenge the audience without any sensitivity to the emotional mood of the score or the surface of the text. Of the glory of lake, forest and field painted by the music, of the tragedy of a love which tries and fails, there is no hint.' Not surprising if it's set in a small-town brothel!
David Karlin in Bachtrack gives a more nuanced two-out-of-five review, but "By the end, I found myself closing my eyes and listening to some thoroughly decent singing and Nézet-Séguin's fabulous rendering of the music. Which is a wonderful thing, but not really what an evening in the opera house is supposed to be about." Watch a justification of the production by Kasper Holten, then the Director of Music at ROH. I think the reason for spending so much of this blog on discussion of the Salzburg production is because it focuses one on issues of darkness behind fairy tales (expose it or tell a Disney story?); truth to the composer's and librettist's creation; blandly conservative productions - even if lavish - versus creative attempts to accentuate and innovate; and of course the bounds of what a production designer should do. The Guardian review by Andrew Clements "ugly but not radical", has some thoughtful words on these matters.
And then there was Glyndebourne's production this year. Read all about this tough and modern presentation of the fable in the review here.
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