We’re off to Liege for this week’s Sunday Opera (9/1 3:00 p.m.) and the Opera Royal de Wallonie production of Antonin Dvorak’s “Rusalka.”
The story is highly similar to Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” but is reportedly based on the fairytales gleaned from the Nordic folk legends by Karel Jaromír Erben and Božena Němcová which came before Andersen’s.
Rusalka (Corinne Winters) is a water nymph who has fallen in love with a prince (Anton Rositskiy) who came to bathe in her lake. She wants nothing more than to become human so that she can be with the prince, and after a great deal of pleading, her father, the Water Goblin Vodnik (Evgeny Stavinsky), tells her the only way she can achieve this is to make a pact with Jezibaba (Nino Surguladze) which, of course, she does but at a cost: she cannot speak and will be damned for eternity if the prince does not fall in love with and marry her.
She becomes human and seems to win the love of the prince until the foreign princess (who may be Jezibaba in disguise) arrives. The prince’s head is turned, and he rejects Rusalka.
The distraught Rusalka returns to the lake where she is told by Jezibaba that she can save herself by killing the prince which Rusalka refuses to do, so she is condemned to be a will-o-the-whisp who inhabits the depths of the lake, only rising to lure men to their deaths.
After the prince is jilted and scorned by the princess, he finds his way to the lake and summons Rusalka, asks her for the kiss he knows will kill him, and dies in her arms. As Rusalka sinks into the lake, she sings, "For your love, for that beauty of yours, for your inconstant human passion, for everything by which my fate is cursed, human soul, God have mercy on you!" Having forgiven him, she tries to save his soul.
This production also features Jiri Rajnis, Hongni Wu, Lucie Kankova, Katerina Hebelkova, Sfia Janelidze, and Alexander Marev. Giampaolo Bisanti conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Opea Royale de Wallonie.
We’ll continue with more of Dvorak’s music after the opera including the lost, found, and almost destroyed Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, his delightful My Home Overture, as well as his Slavonic Dance #4 to leave you with some happy feet.
