Rusalka - English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire, 10 October 2008
![Rusalka_174[1]](http://intermezzo.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834ff890853ef0105357dda3a970b-500wi)
Dvorak's Rusalka seems to be on a roll right now. Grange Park Opera did it this summer, Glyndebourne will tackle it next, and The Beautiful Tonsils of Renee Fleming will be wrapped around it at the Met next spring.
The story of the water nymph who takes on human form to win a prince's love is relocated in English Touring Opera's new production, sung in English, to a bygone Haiti. Divided by colour and class, voodoo spells bring the unhappy couple together before social pressure drives them apart.
It's a neat and thoughtful transposition, and though a few details were puzzling, the fundamentals of the story were clearly spun out on the elegant, pared-down sets.
Equally trimmed, the chamber arrangement naturally sacrifices the sweeping flourish of the full orchestration, but it gains in intimacy.
There was some top-class singing on display - though of course it's odd for an operatic heroine to spend most of her time silenced by a magic spell. The quirkily beautiful Donna Bateman made her speechless pleas just as expressive as her voice, which captured perfectly Rusalka's impenetrable melancholy and wistfulness.
Richard Roberts was beltingly impressive in the technically challenging part of the fickle Prince, and Fiona Kimm's batty voodoo priestess Jezibaba raised the otherwise cool temperature (and also had the best costume, a tangle of swirling braid and jewels).
Keel Watson was sturdy and imposing as Rusalka's water carrier father. As the scheming foreign princess who pries the Prince away from Rusalka, Camilla Roberts had the courage to be thoroughly pompous and dislikeable.
"I think I get opera now" said my companion at the end (this was her third). "Everyone's unhappy and then they die". Yup, that's about it.

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