Rusalka
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin
★★★★☆
Rusalka, Dvorak’s 1901 opera, is a close Czech descendant of Undine, by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, from 1811, and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, from 1837 (both sources acknowledged by the composer’s librettist). All three are set in a fairy-tale world.
As the house lights go down and the orchestral prelude begins in Irish National Opera’s coproduction (with Royal Swedish Opera and the Swiss company Nouvel Opéra Fribourg), we can believe we are being transported to that fairy-tale world. A giant black-and-white video projection shows us a water nymph swimming in graceful slow motion.
The projection eventually gives way not to the expected woodland lake but to a labyrinthine myriad of gleaming chrome pipes. We are deep in the bowels of some vast building or a water-treatment plant.
It’s less romantic than the forest, perhaps, but there is joy here nonetheless, with gleeful wood nymphs either climbing and swinging acrobatically on the pipes or singing about the moon and teasing the friendly water sprite Vodnik, Rusalka’s loving father, who is sung with quiet command by Ante Jerkunica. They are girls, in school uniforms, and they are energetic, happy, strong and free.
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What happens to girls? It’s the prevailing question here of Netia Jones, Rusalka’s director. She writes that these fairy-tale nymphs possess a wonderful confidence, the same as we see in real-life girls “until the age of about 11, which is then constrained or crushed by social expectations ... in a contemporary culture that makes younger and younger women feel pressure to modify their bodies”.
Rusalka is obliged to barter with her body in order to pursue human love on dry land. Jones, who is also the production’s set, costume and video designer, asserts that even an old story is “capable of speaking to contemporary audiences and reflecting the conversations of our time”. This is her great achievement in Rusalka, as it was previously for INO with Least Like the Other.
It can only come off with the right cast, of course – as here, above all with the central pairing. The soprano Jennifer Davis presents a beautifully understated embodiment of a very wide emotional range, her voice so tender – even before the famous Song to the Moon – in her opening exchanges with her father, but also so powerful as her plight unfolds. She is nicely matched by the clear, bright tenor of Ryan Capozzo, as the handsome young prince, who also traverses many emotions and who, conveniently, looks very young and handsome. (Never a given.)
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The witch Jezibaba, here reimagined as the director of a cosmetic-surgery clinic, is sung with sprightly cynicism by the mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung. Also cynical, as well as jealous and malicious, is the soprano Giselle Allen as Rusalka’s romantic rival, the Foreign Princess.
The choreographer Jessica Kennedy and the INO chorus score a special triumph with the grotesque formality and symbolism of their dance in the palace.
Dvorak’s score – beautiful, richly romantic and familiar-sounding due in part to its echoes (and thefts!) from his symphonies – receives a sure-handed delivery from the conductor Fergus Sheil.
Rusalka is at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, on Tuesday, March 24th, Thursday, March 26th and Saturday, March 28th
