Dvorak's Rusalka has opera lovers over the moon
Wednesday June 06 2007
THE final offering in this year's Wexford Festival, residing in its temporary quarters at Johnstown Castle, is Dvorak's 'Rusalka'.
Following its Prague premiere in March 1901, 'Rusalka' has been part of the staple diet of Czech opera goers, but it has been slow to gain international recognition. So Wexford's production is both timely and welcome.
Lee Blakeley directs the piece in traditional form, refraining from overburdening it with contemporary symbolism, and Joe Vanek's sets and costumes give the opera a timeless quality.
There is an allowable innovation. The Moon, to which Rusalka sings her famous aria, is an acrobat suspending himself in a self-made hammock above the action.
Rusalka, by the way, is a water sprite who, falling in love with a handsome prince, pleads for her release into the real world. As Oscar Wilde pointed out somewhere, "When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."
While Dvorak's score echoes Tchaikovsky and, oddly, Puccini, it is still rich with his warmth and tenderness, as well as coldness and cruelty. All, indeed, that exemplifies human life.
The Wexford cast is led beautifully by soprano Helena Kaupova. Arresting one's sympathy from the beginning, she retains it to the end through her wealth of appealing tone and colourful expression.
Soprano Iveka Jirikova's Foreign Princess has a penetrating brightness, and as the witch Jezibaba mezzo Katerina Jalovcova is both conniving magician and menacing dominatrix. Tenor Bryan Hymel is the ardent Prince, somewhat strained in moments of anxiety, while bass Andrew Greenam is suitably dark as Rusalka's distraught father, Vodnik, although his intonation also suffers a little insecurity.
David Greeves encounters none of these vocal difficulties as the acrobatic and silent Moon and in the lower orders of the princely household Marketa Matlova and Michael Redding make sterling contributions to the opera's success.
Conductor Dmitri Jurowski provides the score with continuous zest and the festival orchestra sounds particularly subtle by Act III.
PAT O'KELLY
- Wexford Festival Opera
