Dvorak’s Rusalka (1901) is his most famous opera. Like Humperdink’s Hansel and Gretel (1893) it combines sumptuous Wagnerian orchestration with foot tapping folk like melodies. As the German’s might stay, it is a marchenoper (fairytale opera) full of ambiguity and dark consequences.
It has a peculiar ambience that plays artfully with the nature of desire and love, with surrender and death, with human treachery and salvation.
The new Opera Conference Australia production, directed by Sarah Giles for Opera Australia, is a triumph, warmly received by the audience. The set design (Charles Davis) highlights the fairy tale ambience with poignant charm. The two worlds, both deeply strange, the land with its fidgety, farcical human beings, and the watery depths with its eerily disembodied creatures, were potently realised: simplicity, beauty and grotesquery were combined.
Costuming is another highlight (Renee Mulder). The austere and calm presence of the watery depths, the array of spinning norns with their head caps and silky body shapes, was liminal. On land, the handsome Prince and the Foreign Princess were starkly gowned in black and gold, almost misplaced in their out of kilter world, surrounded by the guests whose strange headwear and masks echoed the lower depths but with the suggestion of Olympia’s automaton status.
The aching beauty of the Act 3 staging with Rusalka trapped on her plinth like a Lorelie or an imprisoned Madonna (surrounded by a gauzed nightscape with its iridescent blooms) took the breath away. The lighting (Paul Jackson) and projections (David Bergman) were piquantly layered across the gauze. The image of the swimming Prince in Act 1 was particularly memorable.
The final Wagnerian love duet - when the male protagonist asks for deathly surrender, with one final dark cold kiss from his water sprite - was deeply moving. But Dvorak’s peasant humour has the last word when after all this tragedy the life force emerges, in the rebirth of the water sprite, no longer trapped by her love. In this production she is powerfully and artfully reborn with new knowledge as an emergent witch.
The score is a triumph of eclectic beauty and energy, with a protean melodic pulse that engages and entices. Its onward momentum is charmingly droll - febrile like a dumka. The orchestra, led by Johannes Fritzsch, was in excellent form, particularly the brass and woodwind. The harp’s standout solos were delicious judged, crisply haunting in bardic style.
The casting is deluxe. Nicole Car as Rusalka was all one could have asked for. In Act 2, where her speechless nature is forefront, her acting skills were vivid. Here she physically represented the joyous young water creature, like a fish out of water, flapping its tail, in thrall of the love that now haunts her body. Only at the end of this act when she once more encounters her father, the Water King, does she sing of the heartache that her desire to be human has now wrought. This was a moving and powerful exposition across voice and orchestra.
Her sound is enormous, clean. It navigates the angular melodic approaches and climaxes with breath to spare and a richness that astonishes. The last act - with her renunciation of murder and treachery as a way of ending her soul’s incarceration - was given with absolute potency. The duet with the Prince, he wild with love sickness and aching for death, was movingly sung and enacted. He climbs his stairway to heaven and seeks his own apotheosis. Like Verdi's Otello he seeks once more kiss.
The Prince has a high tessitura, and some unlikeable characters traits, but in this production he was almost the traditional operatic heroine, pitied for his true love and aching heart. Gerard Schneider was handsome, erratic , showy, charming – the mismatched lover. This frisson of human and other worldly love was deeply poetic and symbolic – simply and beautifully staged. His gleaming tenor dealt with the role’s demands with the requisite power and control.
Jezibaba, the witch who enacts Rusalka’s transformation from water creature to speechless human, was crackingly sung by Ashley Timms. As a gloriously and erratically gowned bag lady, Timms has the depths and darkness of vocal talent to summon the character’s supernatural power and the acting chops to create an errant wisdom that knows how fickle human beings are and how love is but a mirage. All this was founded on the dark humour of survival, as her delicate triumph at the end of this production highlighted.
The establishment counter force of female human energy- the Foreign Princess - was realised by Natalia Arroyan, wittily flirting with the Prince until she engages his besottedness and then rejects him. Refulgently sung and amply costumed as a “dancing with the stars” contestant, her dismissal of both the Prince and his cold-blooded water creature was nicely realised. And if her tone did spread a little – it befitted the wilful energy of the character.
Warwick Fyfe, as the Water King, was bound like a dark and voluminous mummy. His stentorian tones shattered both human and water worlds. His heart break at the sadness of his daughter’s fate was tellingly sung and was his implacable desire for vengeance. His appearance electrified the stage.
Andrew Moran and Sian Sharp as the Game-Keeper and the Kitchen-Boy achieved characterful assumptions. Sharp’s encounter with the witch was given as Wagnerian narration that was crisp and darkly comic. The night scenes on earth with the hunting party and Huntsman (Malcolm Ede) were dreamily enacted.
The will of the wisps (the trio of Wood Sprites) were extravagantly costumed, with enormous tendrils and jagged movement. Delightfully quirky, like humorous Rhine Maidens, their reappearance in Act 3 was touching as the ultimate sadness of Rusalka drowned their natural exuberance – as though all the natural world was now in deep mourning.
The chorus sang and moved with choreographed menace as the extravagantly bizarre courtiers.
The power of this work is enormous. It invests the fairy tale with deep riffs of emotion and surging vocal power. The penultimate of Dvorak’s opera, it deserves more exposure in our opera houses.
Opera Australia, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, 5 August 2025
Gar Jones
It has a peculiar ambience that plays artfully with the nature of desire and love, with surrender and death, with human treachery and salvation.
The new Opera Conference Australia production, directed by Sarah Giles for Opera Australia, is a triumph, warmly received by the audience. The set design (Charles Davis) highlights the fairy tale ambience with poignant charm. The two worlds, both deeply strange, the land with its fidgety, farcical human beings, and the watery depths with its eerily disembodied creatures, were potently realised: simplicity, beauty and grotesquery were combined.
Costuming is another highlight (Renee Mulder). The austere and calm presence of the watery depths, the array of spinning norns with their head caps and silky body shapes, was liminal. On land, the handsome Prince and the Foreign Princess were starkly gowned in black and gold, almost misplaced in their out of kilter world, surrounded by the guests whose strange headwear and masks echoed the lower depths but with the suggestion of Olympia’s automaton status.
The aching beauty of the Act 3 staging with Rusalka trapped on her plinth like a Lorelie or an imprisoned Madonna (surrounded by a gauzed nightscape with its iridescent blooms) took the breath away. The lighting (Paul Jackson) and projections (David Bergman) were piquantly layered across the gauze. The image of the swimming Prince in Act 1 was particularly memorable.
The final Wagnerian love duet - when the male protagonist asks for deathly surrender, with one final dark cold kiss from his water sprite - was deeply moving. But Dvorak’s peasant humour has the last word when after all this tragedy the life force emerges, in the rebirth of the water sprite, no longer trapped by her love. In this production she is powerfully and artfully reborn with new knowledge as an emergent witch.
The score is a triumph of eclectic beauty and energy, with a protean melodic pulse that engages and entices. Its onward momentum is charmingly droll - febrile like a dumka. The orchestra, led by Johannes Fritzsch, was in excellent form, particularly the brass and woodwind. The harp’s standout solos were delicious judged, crisply haunting in bardic style.
The casting is deluxe. Nicole Car as Rusalka was all one could have asked for. In Act 2, where her speechless nature is forefront, her acting skills were vivid. Here she physically represented the joyous young water creature, like a fish out of water, flapping its tail, in thrall of the love that now haunts her body. Only at the end of this act when she once more encounters her father, the Water King, does she sing of the heartache that her desire to be human has now wrought. This was a moving and powerful exposition across voice and orchestra.
Her sound is enormous, clean. It navigates the angular melodic approaches and climaxes with breath to spare and a richness that astonishes. The last act - with her renunciation of murder and treachery as a way of ending her soul’s incarceration - was given with absolute potency. The duet with the Prince, he wild with love sickness and aching for death, was movingly sung and enacted. He climbs his stairway to heaven and seeks his own apotheosis. Like Verdi's Otello he seeks once more kiss.
The Prince has a high tessitura, and some unlikeable characters traits, but in this production he was almost the traditional operatic heroine, pitied for his true love and aching heart. Gerard Schneider was handsome, erratic , showy, charming – the mismatched lover. This frisson of human and other worldly love was deeply poetic and symbolic – simply and beautifully staged. His gleaming tenor dealt with the role’s demands with the requisite power and control.
Jezibaba, the witch who enacts Rusalka’s transformation from water creature to speechless human, was crackingly sung by Ashley Timms. As a gloriously and erratically gowned bag lady, Timms has the depths and darkness of vocal talent to summon the character’s supernatural power and the acting chops to create an errant wisdom that knows how fickle human beings are and how love is but a mirage. All this was founded on the dark humour of survival, as her delicate triumph at the end of this production highlighted.
The establishment counter force of female human energy- the Foreign Princess - was realised by Natalia Arroyan, wittily flirting with the Prince until she engages his besottedness and then rejects him. Refulgently sung and amply costumed as a “dancing with the stars” contestant, her dismissal of both the Prince and his cold-blooded water creature was nicely realised. And if her tone did spread a little – it befitted the wilful energy of the character.
Warwick Fyfe, as the Water King, was bound like a dark and voluminous mummy. His stentorian tones shattered both human and water worlds. His heart break at the sadness of his daughter’s fate was tellingly sung and was his implacable desire for vengeance. His appearance electrified the stage.
Andrew Moran and Sian Sharp as the Game-Keeper and the Kitchen-Boy achieved characterful assumptions. Sharp’s encounter with the witch was given as Wagnerian narration that was crisp and darkly comic. The night scenes on earth with the hunting party and Huntsman (Malcolm Ede) were dreamily enacted.
The will of the wisps (the trio of Wood Sprites) were extravagantly costumed, with enormous tendrils and jagged movement. Delightfully quirky, like humorous Rhine Maidens, their reappearance in Act 3 was touching as the ultimate sadness of Rusalka drowned their natural exuberance – as though all the natural world was now in deep mourning.
The chorus sang and moved with choreographed menace as the extravagantly bizarre courtiers.
The power of this work is enormous. It invests the fairy tale with deep riffs of emotion and surging vocal power. The penultimate of Dvorak’s opera, it deserves more exposure in our opera houses.
Opera Australia, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, 5 August 2025
Gar Jones
