To add to this week's free laptop viewing, La Monnaie are streaming a recently recorded performance of Rusalka on demand from Tuesday 27 March to Monday 16 April.
Stefan Herheim's 2008 production tells the story from the Water Goblin's perspective. Yes, Rusalka is a ho, but there are no fake pussies, and Stefan Herheim's concept is bolder and clearer than Covent Garden's recent production.
Here's a trailer for its original 2008 outing:
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I was going to pull together a list of the Rusalka reviews, but the Royal Opera House have saved me the bother. It's comprehensive too - unlike ENO, the ROH haven't restricted their quotes to the rare lines of praise. Wouldn't it be helpful to see a list like this as part of the regular production information for each show?
You might also care to read the best of the Daily Telegraph's six (yes, six) shamefully drama-milking column fillers - luvvie Michael Simkins on the venerable history of the boo.
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Rusalka - Royal Opera House, 27 February 2012 (ROH work premiere)
Despite the Daily Telegraph's best efforts to whip up controversy about its supposedly "anti-semitic" and "terrorist" content, the first night of ENO's The Death of Klinghoffer apparently passed with barely a hint of protest. Audience slowly lulled into torpor would be my guess.
Yet over at the Royal Opera House, Dvorak's Rusalka, an opera about - let's face it - a bunch of fairies in a pond, excited a response more suited to a state visit by Robert Mugabe.
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Rusalka - Semperoper Dresden, 17 May 2011
There’s no such thing as an innocent myth - it’s impossible to present Rusalka to a modern, thinking audience as your everyday interspecies romance. In Munich, Martin Kušej recently plunged his fork into the rampant misogyny beneath the opera’s sparkling surface with a dead deer-garnished tale of child abuse.
Stefan Herheim instead chooses to slither around it and examine the consequences of male desire from the guy's perspective. Setting the abused and silenced Rusalka to one side, his story is centred on the Waterman. Clever or cowardly? A few thigh boots, bouncy sex dolls, British bobbies and dancing kids in fish suits later it's easy to forget the question.
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Rusalka - Nationaltheater Munich, 23 October 2010
Martin Kušej's Rusalka is no fairy tale, though I wonder if that was made clear beforehand to the parents of the sweet little girls I saw in the foyer before the show, all done up in their party best. Let's just say that two hours of rape, incest and disembowelled animals later, they were nowhere to be seen.
Maybe it should carry a warning sticker, but Kušej's dark fable includes some of the most powerful and original work I've seen for some time. Like many an ambitious retelling, it doesn't quite entirely hang together, but it does reveal a weight and contemporary relevance that no mermaid story could.
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Tonight I'll be at the premiere of Martin Kusej's new Rusalka in Munich.
And you can be there too! Sorta. The local radio station, BR-Klassik, is broadcasting the whole thing live. It starts at 7pm CET (6pm UK), with half an hour's chat (in German) beforehand. Use the 'Live hören' button in the top right hand corner of the home page to listen.
It's conducted by Tomas Hanus and the cast includes Kristine Opolais as Rusalka and Klaus Florian Vogt as the Prince.
More production photos from the Bavarian State Opera over the page:
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Looks like the Bavarians are taking a break from eviscerating conductors. Local animal rights activists are up in arms after it was reported that the State Opera's new Rusalka will incorporate dead deer.
A fresh deer will be provided for every performance of Martin Kusej's production, which opens on 23 October. The carcasses will have to be thrown away immediately after each show for hygiene reasons.
The Bayerischen Tierschutzbundes (Animal Protection League) have asked State Opera director Nikolaus Bachler to use a plastic dummy instead. The Bund Naturschutz in Bayern described the production as "very questionable" and expressed shock at the "insensitivity" of the artists to living beings.
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*UPDATE* the protests have forced the State Opera to back down - they're going to use a fake deer instead.
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Rusalka - English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire, 10 October 2008
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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