Royal Opera’s new Rusalka is all about the music — review

Buying a ticket to see Rusalka is a bit like trying one’s luck at the lottery. Dvořák’s fairytale opera is so susceptible to different readings: will the production make Rusalka the victim of male oppression or a siren of temptation luring men to their doom? Does it represent a rite of passage or a meeting of parallel worlds?

The Royal Opera’s new production, created by Natalie Abrahami and Ann Yee, is something else again. In this enchanted natural world, the human race is about to unleash pollution and destruction. The theme has become ecological, both in the message the opera is communicating and the sustainability of the production itself.

The picturesque setting of the first act conjures a traditional woodland lake, the hanging fronds of greenery made from fabric offcuts. In the second act, the Prince has ruined the countryside with the building of his palace, and an eye-wateringly tacky place it is (no self-respecting water spirit would want to go near the giant plastic blow-up swan and seahorse). By the last act, Rusalka’s idyllic lakeland is strewn with detritus and the vegetation is mostly dead.

Unfortunately, the production tends to look cheap in the wrong way and, more damagingly, long passages go by in which the energy seems to have drained from the opera, leaving the singers washed up with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

This performance is all about the music. Given its premiere in 1901, Rusalka is not only Dvořák’s finest opera, but in the richness of its invention one of the high points in Romantic opera’s century-long absorption with myth and legend.

As Rusalka, Asmik Grigorian follows her earlier Jenůfa in London with another major Czech role. Her voice may not have the lustrous beauty of Renée Fleming, who owned this role for several decades, but it is keenly focused, a slim sound which carries far, and she brings much intensity to the role.

Similarly, David Butt Philip, also most recently seen in Janáček, is her youthful and engaging Prince. At times, greater weight of voice might be helpful, but his singing is scrupulous, at ease when the vocal writing goes high, and he has an appealing, Romantic sound.

It makes a change to have a Ježibaba who is not just an old witch (the production suggests a “wise medicine woman”), and Sarah Connolly sings warmly, but in the end the role does demand a tougher voice. Aleksei Isaev is an eloquent, dignified Vodnik and Emma Bell is in her element as the glamorous Foreign Princess, firing off imperious volleys of sound. Hongni Wu and Ross Ramgobin bring light relief as the Kitchen Boy and Gamekeeper. Pity the trio of wood spirits — Vuvu Mpofu, Gabrielė Kupšytė and Anne Marie Stanley, all excellent — who are costumed as if they have raided the reject cupboard at a Brazilian carnival.

With conductor Semyon Bychkov plumbing depths of colour and resonance in the orchestra, this Rusalka is always flourishingly alive down in the pit, even if not on stage.

★★★☆☆

To March 7, roh.org.uk