RUSALKA (Glyndebourne Festival Opera)****

By Dave

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyrGRoa7FuI&feature=emb_logo

Available until: Friday 4^th December, 6pm

I possibly shouldn’t be posting this as the opera is Unlisted on youtube and I only found out because I’m subscribed to the ATG Tickets emails and one contained this link. So if anyone wants this taken down, we’re very happy to do that but in the meantime it seems a shame that only ATG tickets supporters can see it. It’s not like we actually pay ATG Tickets anything. Not unless we attend their shows.

But anyway, this is a video of Glyndebourne’s production of Antonín Dvořák’s opera Rusalka which I think is from 2019.

Most fans of opera will be familiar with Rusalka’s Song to the Moon which is a regular in concerts and on CD recordings and that arguably is the highlight but the music is great all the way through. It’s passionate, it’s atmospheric, and Robin Ticciati conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a sensual reading of the score. The production is quite naughty in places and you can certainly get a sense of that in the music.

It’s a story we all probably have some familiarity with – it’s basically The Little Mermaid. (No singing crab in this production but there is lots of singing.) The mermaid Rusalka falls in love with a human Prince and asks a witch to cast a spell to make her human – at the expense of losing her voice. You’ll have to wait and see whether they get the Disney happy ending.

Movement is very important in Melly Still’s production. Professional dancers are used but there is also choreography given to the singers, whether it’s a complete dance routine (they do very well) or graceful movement to suggest a feeling of floating. Or swimming. It’s very effective and it can make some parts of the opera seem almost dreamlike.

Paule Constable is the lighting director and if at first Rusalka’s world seems a little too dark, you soon get used to that. The human world is almost shockingly bright by contrast and it really brought it home to me that Rusalka’s problems on entering the human world aren’t just social. Everything is completely different, including Rusalka’s own body.

Rusalka is played by Sally Matthews, who was right at the start of her career when I first started getting interested in opera. Obviously, that wasn’t very long ago at all but she’s now an experienced professional who’s moved from lighter repertoire into dramatic soprano territory, with great success. As Rusalka, she sings richly and powerfully, a full, sensual tone that nevertheless conveys Rusalka’s vulnerability and innocence as she seeks, and then finds, a life she can’t fully understand. Sally also copes magnificently with her tail and has to sing part of Song to the Moon lying on her back. She does that magnificently too. Without looking stupid.

Alexander Roslavets, who plays Rusalka’s father Vodnik, has a physical challenge all of his own. He spends the opera wearing something like a body stocking which suggests not only nudity but considerable… endowment. Aashiq said he couldn’t look him in the face. Maybe it’s better if we don’t examine that statement any further. It’s a perfectly reasonable costume for a water nymph but it is a bit surprising. A lot of people see opera as being all boring and respectable, but the things I’ve seen on an opera stage… anyway, once I’d come to terms with the distraction, I noticed Alexander has a really deep bass voice that suggests danger and power. I doubt many men could exude a sense of dignity in that costume, but he manages it.

The Prince, a mere human with no tails of any kind, had quite a lot to compete with. He’s a shallow man who seems to go through life wanting what he can’t have. But don’t we all? Evan LeRoy Johnson is a powerfully-voiced tenor and when the Prince has some genuine emotion to show, he shows it.

Patricia Bardon plays the role of the witch Jezibaba. She’s genuinely creepy and her strong low notes were made for the character. Not someone I’d trust personally but that’s probably why Rusalka is the title character in an opera and I’m just a TV channel. Zoya Tsrerina’s cold Foreign Princess forms a wonderful contrast with the passionate Rusalka and Alix Le Saux is delightful as the gossiping Kitchen Maid. If I don’t hear of her again, I’ll be very surprised.