BTW, here's an interesting quiz q for you....   which OTHER operatic heroine is forced to deny her own background and society and abandon it utterly for the sake of love of a man from far, far away...  and also has her love trampled on when he goes off with his "foreign princess" instead...  and is left unable to return to the world from which she's now estranged?

Easy-peasy question which you will all get... but isn't it interesting how many plot elements are the same...  even down to having an ensemble of "sisters" too?

Actually, I thought this was one point that emerged really strongly from Pountney's production - that unforgettable image of Rusalka imprisoned in a whirling glass box while the second-act polonaise was being danced around it by faceless courtiers.

Listening again to third act of the opera again this evening, I can see where you are coming from in talking about a paean of the pastoral - the nature music is exquisite, and very different from that of the human world (although some of the latter does almost seem to "infect" the former at points).

Thanks, PW - you said in three lines what I strained but failed to say in thrice the number


Aha... the danger with "guess-what-I'm-thinking-of" questions is that someone guesses better   Bravo, I hadn't even thought of her! I was thinking of a successor to Rusalka rather than precursor...  Cio-Cio-San    I like Brunnhilde as an answer!  But the RING doesn't quote contain the element of "judgement" against the entire culture of culture of the treacherous lover concerned.  Sharpless is something of a "water-goblin", with his asides of caution and foreboding,  I think?

BTW, a Czech audience must have noticed, I think, similarities with another Bride who thinks she's been Bartered?  The line between comedy and tragedy is a fine one and - as has famously been said, by Christopher Booker and others before him - depends only on your own viewpoint    (Chekhov is the master of this..  you can play THE SEAGULL as a rollicking farce about a ninny who writes plays as truly terrible as the ones wot Ernie Wise wrote... or as a piercing tragedy about bullying and rejection... I've seen both work well).

Now!  We shouldn't forget that Dvorak's wasn't the first RUSALKA!  Dargomyzhsky (1813-67) had written his RUSALKA had appeared in 1856, nearly half a century before Dvorak's (Dvorak must have known the piece, as it was advanced as evidence of a true "Russian school of composition" by "The Mighty Handful" after the composer's death.)   Although Dargomyzhsky is certainly feeling his way with the style of "romantic" opera at times, there is lots of good stuff in it.  The plot is slightly different...  Natasha begins as a penniless Miller's daughter, who has been seduced and abandoned by a Prince. He tells her that he is to marry the bride of his parents choosing - she in turn reveals she is pregnant with his child. He tries to buy her off with a necklace as a token, but when he walks away she casts herself into the River Dnipr, where she becomes a mermaid, and gives birth to a mermaid daughter.  She then arrives Banquo-like at his wedding to haunt the guests. When he turns-up, forlorn, at the river's edge, he is lured into the shallows by Rusalka's song... Rusalka's daughter snatches his leg, and carries him off to a watery "marriage" with his abandoned lover.

The closest Franz Liszt ever got to writing an opera - the extended Lied "Die Lorelei" - is also, coincidentally, about a water-sprite who lures would-be lovers to their deaths with her beautiful song  

Moral - never fall in love with a soprano     

PS I can't think of Dargomyzhsky's RUSALKA without recalling seeing it for the first (and only) time in St Petersburg, at what was then still the Kirov, with my friend Olga (who was a scenery-painter at the theatre at the time).  The Miller has a three-couplet aria at the very start, with a refain to each couplet that goes "I'm the Miller, yes, the Miller, I'm the Miller of this town!  I'm the Miller, yes, the Miller.." etc.  By the third verse, Olga nudged me and asked "I'm not sure... d'ya think he's the Miller?"

Reiner,
I was thinking about Dargomyzhsky's Rusalka while reading this thread. I like it. I like that Melnik song and the opera as a whole. We had to learn some of the music for Russian music history course. I don't think Dargomyzhsky name is known outside of Russia.
I forgot now, but I remember playing his Romances (Art Songs).
Do you know his opera Stone guest. I can remember some parts of it. It is very nice opera, but probably forgotten.

The Stone Guest was done at the ENO, in about 1985 or 1986, IIRC - I did see it but I'm afraid I have no recollection of the music whatsoever (I do recall that Graham Clark was in it)

Hello All

I too want to add my vote for Rusalka. It is truely a beautiful and moving work. It was staged here in Wexford last year, and was the hit of the festival. The music is superb, and with a thoughtful and well reasoned production I believe it can be a hit every time.

The production here in Wexford was a little odd, but the singing and playing were top notch. All the female singers were Czech, and the tenor was a very promising american (Bryan Hymel). The conductor was Dmitri Jurowski, Vladimir's younger brother, who is sure to carry on the family tradition.

I'm glad to see that I am not the only one who think's that Rusalka's 3rd act aria is actually better than the Song to the Moon!

Was interested to see Dargomyzhsky's opera mentioned too. I saw that here in 1997 in a Dmitri Bertmann production. I have not listened to it much since, but I do recall that it was an interesting piece. Must dig out the recordings and refresh my memory.

Wex

Here's a YouTube clip of Bertmann's Helikon Production, but being shown at the Mariinsky Theatre with their orchestra.  Soprano is Helikon-Opera soloist Elena Semenova...   I think the Water-Goblin is Igor' Tarasaov?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=o_uVkTMfEUU

And here are Jenisova and Hrisko in a Prague National Theatre production:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XSaPBGQN7VE

And here's the utterly fabulous Polish sopranoa Barbara Dobrzanska in full flight, putting the lyric sopranos to shame:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mEfDX_41UD0

And finally, here's a bit of the Dargomyzhsky opera RUSALKA - some vintage Bolshoi footage (in Russian) of Aleksei Kryvchenia telling us that he's the Miller, yes, the Miller, yes, the Miller of this town...   Fabulous bass singing!!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JLiM7FCPaXc

The whole thing is a treat for Jungian analysts, but one thing struck me in particular which has not been mentioned, which is Ježibaba the witch addressing Rusalka after her engagement has broken down to condemn her to everlasting punishment.  You can be freed, says the witch, if you plunge a dagger into him.  I can't possibly do that says Rusalka, predictably.  So says Ježibaba:

Into the deceitful human world
Your longing has lead you astray –
Do you not have the strength
To spill a drop of human blood.
A man becomes a man
Only when he has bathed in the blood of another
When goaded on by passion
He has become drunk on the blood of another.
And you were the one who wanted to become
Human, to intoxicate a man with passion?
You are nothing but an empty bubble of water,
A pale lunar good for nothing!
Go then and suffer for all eternity –
And shrivel up with longing for this man.


Does this mean that for humans sex and violence are inevitibly linked?  It is a very compelling passage.  Ježibaba is not so much a wicked witch, although she would never be a success as a therapist.  She gives Rusalka what she wants, and points out the consequences, albeit with a degree of malice.  But she never originates any malicious events herself.