I was lucky enough to catch this yesterday at the Hackney Empire.  OK, no chorus, touring set, reduced orchestration, but you still had the dramatic situation.

A new production by James Conway and associate director Tom Daley, conducted by Alex Ingram, with designs by Paul Wills.  Donna Bateman (Susannah, ETO Spring 2008) sings the title role, with Richard Roberts as the Prince, Fiona Kimm as Ježibaba, Camilla Roberts as the Foreign Princess.   

And yet, somehow it failed to light my fire, as it were.  Maybe it was the performance.  But Fiona Kimm took the plum part of the wicked witch who tells the truth with all she could, and still the music and the plot didn't somehow match to my mind.

Although I sniff at late romanticism at times, this music was not remotely slushy or sentimental, but lovely.  (Maybe it's the insistent scotch snap of Czech music that holds back the slush?)

But there is something profound and disturbing about the plot - to be fully human is to be violent, jealous, mortal and passionate, but without all that you never know love.

Take the opening of Act 2, which I seem to remember IGI compared favourably to the famous Song to the Moon.  The music is lovely, but Rusalka is describing in detail her eternal damnation.  Seems a bit odd to me.

The tenor was not that bad.  He sang well too.