Dvorak : Rusalka
The Chorus of Rusalka
The Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Stuart Stratford
Dvorak's librettist for Rusalka, the playwright Jaroslav Kvapil, openly acknowledged that he had come up with the basis for his text while on holiday in Denmark, and under the influence of Hans Christian Andersen, but to my mind the end result has always been far closer to La Motte Fouqué's Ondine than The Little Mermaid, if for no other reason than its setting. The Czech story, like the German novella, belongs to the land and the forest, whereas Andersen's tale is of the open spaces of the sea - it's a completely different atmosphere. Director Antony McDonald, revising a production made for Grange Park Opera in 2008, has kept the forest, however stylised, in his framed decors in cool greys and whites, with the odd touch of red for the disruptive elements.
His staging has also remained pretty firmly anchored in the fairy-tale, rather than going off into psycho-analytical re-interpretations à la Bettelheim. I'm inclined to say 'thank goodness', because some of the reports I've read of that other kind of production have been a bit hair-raising. Not to say that McDonald doesn't raise some suitably disquieting points - Rusalka's induction into the human state comes straight out of Der Struwwelpeter, even if it's more or less conducted out of sight. It's a quietly efficient production, cool, like its colours, perhaps a little detached, but a good version for the first staging of this work by Scottish Opera, and the first performances in Scotland in fifty years.
The main reason Rusalka is the only one of Dvorak's ten operas to be performed regularly, apart from the superior libretto, is that it's the one work in which he finally managed to harness the full panoply of his symphonic talent to the purposes of an opera, to the explicit expression of mood and emotion, so that you have not only the melodic flow, but the richness and inventiveness of orchestral development, working in tandem in a way he never quite pulled off in any other opera. This does mean that the orchestra is absolutely vital to Rusalka, it's not just a support for the singers, but a character in its own right and needs to be heard as such, and therefore brought forward by the conductor, yet without drowning the singers either. The company's new Music Director, Stuart Stratford, managed this highly successfully, with very good attention to the orchestral colours, and never letting things flag. I was aware of the orchestra throughout in just the right degree, a constant, balanced presence.
The vocal plateau was, on the whole, pretty satisfactory too, even the smaller parts confidently taken; Julian Hubbard's Gamekeeper was particularly strong. Natalya Romaniw was an opulent Foreign Princess, Leah Marian-Jones was repellently delightful as a gleefully sinister Jezibaba (think Anjelica Huston in The Witches, in glamorous mode), while Peter Wedd was a pleasant surprise as the Prince. I had some worries about whoever might end up in this part; you need a sort of bright, lightish Wagnerian to sing it, because he has some heavy orchestration to sing through, and requires a big, romantic tone, which tends to be a bit of challenge at the best of times. Wedd handled the role very well, mostly, clear and strong, if not always beautiful in tone. Then again, Sir Willard White, six months short of his 70th birthday, effortlessly upstaged more or less the entire cast, in fine, resonant form as the Vodník, and with his usual, vibrant, stage presence making itself felt at every appearance.
Rusalka herself was sung by Anne Sophie Duprels, reprising the role from the Grange Park performances. Dramatically, she was excellent, always a little off-balance, comfortable nowhere, neither as a water-nymph, nor as a human, nor even as the wraith she becomes at the end, a perpetually dissatisfied spirit, in search of something indefinable, and quite possibly non-existent. Vocally, she was secure enough, and comfortable in the wide range of the part, though with a touch too much beat in her voice for my tastes, and not quite enough luminosity of timbre to be ideal, but giving a generally very sound performance nevertheless. If, at the end of that ecstatic final scene, I didn't have that slight catch in my throat I usually get at that point, this was still a fine production, well worth seeing.
[Next : 9th April]
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