Les vêpres siciliennes at ROH

21/10/13

This production marks the first time that the ROH has ever staged Les vêpres siciliennes, but perhaps more excitingly, it is also the house début of opera director du jour, Stefan Herheim. It's a surprising choice for him in some ways as he has tended to stick to German repertoire and Italian warhorses, but he clearly had a reason for doing this one. One of the central concerns of Herheim's work is the operatic artform itself, and there is hardly a production that he has done that does not make a comment on some aspect of opera and how we relate to it. This it turns out is his reason for taking on Les vêpres siciliennes - the opera charts the course of Sicilian rebellion against a French invasion, and Herheim seems to see this as parallel to what Verdi was doing in this very opera - wrestling French grand opera back into the hands of the Italians. But Herheim is nothing if not complex - he's tackling a lot of other issues here as well as telling the story of Verdi's opera. Here's what I got from the experience.

Herheim's concept naturally lends itself very easily to the now tired "stage within a stage" motif that has been done so often in opera productions over the last five years (read this post by the always amusing and insightful Zerbinettas blog for a partial list). Herheim is particularly interested in making us question why we go to the opera and what we use the experience for, so this can be a useful device for him. He also more literally shines a light on the audience a couple of times, whilst the entire cast address us directly - once at the end of Act I's call to action, and then at the very end of the show when a huge lighting array descends, blinding the entire audience. It wasn't at all clear why this was happening in light of what we'd just seen, and though I'm sure there was a reason, if there is to be some moralising light shone on us, the impact is lost if it's unclear what we're meant to be feeling so desperately guilty about. Really can't think what he was trying to say here I'm afraid, presumably because I'm so stuck in my own paradigm.

The stage that is depicted within the ROH stage is the Paris opera house of the mid 19th century - we get to see French high society ladies and gents in their boxes watching Sicilian peasants on stage. Backstage, the foppish Jean Procida (played by Erwin Schrott) martials his ballet dancers, and we are of course reminded of Degas and his subject matter - the relationship between working women and society gentlemen. The overture is brilliantly choreographed, as Herheim sets the scene and provides the entire background to the opera with dazzling precision and synchronicity to the score. Procida's rehearsal is interrupted, as Guy de Montfort (played by Michael Volle) and his French soldiers burst in with guns, before forcing themselves on the screaming ballet dancers. Before anyone objects to this "gross thwarting of Verdi's noble humanity" or whatever the objection normally is, De Montfort's abduction and rape of the nameless woman is not merely Herheim's interpolation. In Act III, eighteen years after this opening scene, De Montfort admits to regretting the rape (though then says that withholding a child from a rapist father is a worse action!). The scene is also entirely apt to the situation that most Parisian ballet dancers found themselves in Verdi's time - i.e. sexual prey for rich French men.

We see the result of this rape, the child Henri's development from gestation, to infant, to boy, to young man in a matter of seconds - he symbolises (and is) the bastard offspring of a forced union between French and Italian art, but already the ghosts that haunt de Montfort have appeared. In the opening chorus, the French troops prepare to sing, but the Sicilian peasants on stage usurp their moment and start singing their own song - they are the stage performers in this after all. The occupied Sicilians are lead by Hélène (played by Marina Poplavskaya), who comes on garbed in black, clutching the decaying head of her murdered brother - a literal token of her grief and vendetta against her captors. She calls on them to rise up. In Act II we see a wedding interrupted by more French brutality and abduction (the scene presages the Act V wedding scene which is thwarted by a mirrored act of violence, this time the Sicilians acting against the French). Again Hélène calls the Sicilian men into action against their oppressors, and a plot is hatched with Procida to murder de Montfort at the masked ball. The plot is foiled by Henri's attachment to his father and the plotters are condemned to death, though Henri is spared because de Montfort wants him as an heir.

The executioner is the same little boy that de Montfort sentimentally imagines during his Act III reflection/regret aria. Again the boy symbolises the cause of the conflict and murders - the unnatural offspring of separate cultures. The execution is of course stayed by de Montfort when the adult Henri's love for Hélène means that he's willing to die for her. De Montfort then gives his blessing to the wedding of Henri and Hélène. It seems the nations are united peacefully, with the French men now amorously courting the Italian women, French patrons and Italian artists reconciled. The French operatic audience applaud appreciatively at this happy ending and enjoy the wedding scene divertimento that follows. But there is one plot yet to unfold: Procida plans to use the wedding to signal a massacre of the French, and warns Hélène of this. She realises that she cannot go through with the wedding during a dream sequence in which Procida, now wearing a black and red ball gown that both mirrors Hélène's wedding dress and recalls her Act I mourning regalia, murders Sicilians and French alike at the wedding party. He cannot and will not let go of the past. Despite Hélène's protestations, de Montfort abruptly pronounces the young couple married, and the opera ends. Then we, the real audience, get the search light treatment which I have already admitted to finding perplexing. A strange ending.

Anyone who knows the story of Les vêpres siciliennes will see then that this is not a particularly interventionist staging, and it actually tells the story more grippingly than many will expect. The "concept" gets less relevant throughout the evening, and in the end doesn't add much that is profoundly illuminating, but the whole is consistently very engaging. In Herheim stagings one always suspects that one is missing layers of meaning, especially not having read the program, but having just this second scanned some other reviews, it seems that no one else is currently the wiser in terms of offering interpretations.

The greatest strength of Herheim's direction it seems to me is that he so obviously reads the score and follows its clues. There is hardly ever a jarring mismatch of image and sound, and if there is, it will be for some very obvious dramatic effect. The risk is that it turns into the "Herheim show" and we lose the original work beneath the multi layered coups de theatres, but that doesn't happen here, and he transforms Verdi's problematic, transitional opera into a very entertaining and imaginative evening.

Philip Furhofer's set must be the most complex I've ever seen. The number of degrees of freedom that it presents is almost unimaginably complex - the same basic elements are used to construct probably a dozen different stage pictures, all by sliding, shifting and adjusting the pieces. The pivoting walls at one point get converted into wings for the onstage "stage", which we then get to see from all angles. There were a few technical glitches on the second evening I went, but it's an amazing piece of design. Costumes, Lighting Design and choreography (by Gesine Vollm, Anders Poll and André de Jon respectively) all work seamlessly with the rest to create a real sense of grand opera, even as the production comments on the genre.

Haroutounian

Musically this is a decent evening. First let's talk about our divas. Marina Poplavskaya had pulled out of the first three evenings due to being ill during the final few days of rehearsal, and Lianna Haroutounian had already stepped in as a cover for the opening night performance. But for whatever reason Poplavskaya was back for this evening (the second performance of the run). The first night I only managed to attend Acts IV and V, and so only got to hear Haroutounian in that last portion of the opera. Based on that, she seemed vocally wholly incommensurate to the requirements of the role of Hélène, one of the most demanding that Verdi ever wrote. The coloratura was extremely approximate, both in pitch and in rhythm - she was so consistently a half beat late in the bolero that I wondered whether she was singing another version of the aria. Above the stave the sound is very large, but also extremely unfocussed, but the middle voice is wispy, poorly supported and badly connected to the present but weak chest register. Many people were impressed by her in last season's Don Carlo, but reading back on my impression of her then, I find my impression is largely unchanged. Perhaps she was already ill on the first night?

Poplavskaya by comparison has a much more focussed timbre, and the three registers are each powerful and full. She has real trouble connecting the registers however, and her top is unstable at every volume, painfully so when singing quietly. This is the best I've ever seen her perform though - there was a real commitment to characterisation, both dramatically and musically, and rhythmically she can't be faulted (important in Verdi). What I liked about this performance is that she endeavoured to use the voice colouristically, and although she forced too much in the chest register, almost shouting at times, better too much than too little in my book. Vocal imperfections notwithstanding, she was a really great presence in Acts I and II, spitting out her lines with abandon and sulking with her decapitated head. As expected, her coloratura went awry in the bolero, but at least she was in time and the bottoms of those runs were fully supported. Though far from perfect, overall I would say it was the more successful performance of the showpiece of the two, despite two severe vocal mishaps (an unintended glissando and some clucked/squealed high notes). The previous aria, with its famous descent from a high C# to the F# below middle C was predictably dodged by both sopranos, but neither could sing what they'd altered the line to either, which was disappointing. All in all, really strange casting choices. Maybe it's as simple as both being cheap to hire and willing to work with an out there director?

Bryan Hymel was his old (young) dependable self as Henri, dispatching phrase after rock solid phrase as if dramatic Verdian Tenor roles are nothing to stress over. I'm not averse to the timbre, as I know many others are, so I find his performances enjoyable, though they do err on the side of the generic. He's young still for this repertoire (he's 34 and has sung four huge tenor roles at the ROH in the last year and a half) so has time to develop as an artist - his Rusalka Prince is still the finest I've seen him, and perhaps the Czech repertoire might be a fertile avenue of exploration for him. And one day a Tannhauser? The combination of high centre of the voice, real control and heroic weight is very uncommon.

Daddy issues.

Michael Volle is also tireless in the role of Guy de Montfort, though I question whether the voice is ideally suited to this repertoire - like his recent ROH Scarpia, though there's no question that he can sing this part excellently, there's the feeling that his central talent might be for sculpting words rather than a limpid Italianate phrase. Still, this was pretty great singing, and I liked his acting of this none too subtle part too - he and Herheim have managed to make quite a lot of the character. Erwin Schrott takes on the Bass role of Procida and acquits himself admirably in a fach that is probably a vocal category lower than what he usually sings. With its slight hardness, the timbre is not as attractive as Volle's, but I had him down as a bit of a bellower and he proved me wrong here - there was quiet, sensitive singing a plenty here. He does very well in the camp drag-act massacre of Act V too, and throughout in fact as the powerless, embittered dance master. Smaller roles are all well taken. The chorus sound great in the big choral climaxes, though are not perfectly coordinated in a few of the trickier quiet portions. Largely though, Antonio Pappano has everything firmly in hand in the pit, making the very most that he can of this score.

A fun evening, with a few thought provoking moments. Mileage will vary based on one's liking of lesser Verdi, and how far one can forgive a diva's vocal shortcomings. It's mainly a pleasure to see a director so well attuned to a score, whatever the score's ultimate merits may be.



All photos copyright ROH/Bill Cooper

Robert le Diable at the Royal Opera House.

06/12/2012

Oh dear, oh dear. It turns out that Robert le Diable is a COLOSSAL waste of time, and I am absolutely mystified as to why the ROH would choose to mount a production of it. It's not as if this is one of those scores that is absolutely gorgeous on record, but fails to make convincing drama on stage: this is one of the most consistently banal and abjectly uninspired scores I think I have ever had the displeasure of hearing in an opera house. I know, I know, I should have checked before I went, usually I like to prepare, but sometimes it's good to just take a risk.

The opera opens with an overture that simply sounds unfinished - as if a third of the instruments aren't playing their parts: skeletal, illogical, bare, dull. There follows the most palid brindisi I've ever heard (is it called a brindisi if it's French opera? Whatever.) I sat agog as banality followed banality, an unremitting stream of mild bilge. Act II opens a dull aria for love sick Isabelle, then a bland and utterly unconvincing "ecstatic" cabaletta as she receives a letter for him. And so on for the first interminable 75 minutes, not a single moment of interest, not one melody, idea or motive stuck in the mind, nothing developed, no texture or vocal line approaching the interesting, let alone beautiful. What is worse, is that the music is not just thin on ideas, it's also aurally "thin": pages and pages of dessicated, empty score, the orchestra barely congealing into a whole.

Laurent Pelly's production tries its best with this aimless, soulless mess. He takes it as seriously as he can, but when the drama is so ludicrous and trite, and the music so lacking in tension and dramatic thrust, what is a director to do? The very substance of the work is cliché and contrivance.

His usual talent for excellent design and visual congruence with the score was not forthcoming (unless it was in the ironic sense mentioned below). The setting is fundamentally mediaeval, though it's very stylised, and even cartoony in places - this is not evocative music, and I wonder if Pelly's primary colours, card board cut out landscapes and skeletal buildings are in some way meant to be a reflection of the sound of the score (even unconsciously). Usually I am a huge fan of Pelly's wit and soft Gallic charm, but there wasn't enough for him to latch on to here, and he's not in his home territory of comedy. Characters are constantly addressing the audience, and Pelly does his old trick of making the Chorus quickly turn their heads to the audience every time they sing. There's a lot of pat moralising in the libretto, and probably Pelly is trying to make it addressed to us the audience, but it just didn't work. I felt sorry for him though - what on earth was he meant to do with this bloated corpse?

Act III picks up somewhat, and we get a brilliantly choreographed ballet (by Lionel Hoch) of sexy undead nuns that have been called from the grave to seduce Robert, though by that stage I no longer cared about the why. The music for this section is again amazingly un-apt for the subject matter. In Act IV we finally get some music that at least holds the attention, even if it isn't very good, and Isabelle gets a pretty aria. Notable is a bizarre unaccompanied trio which is also bad music but arrestingly strange. Act 5 reverts to total banality, though the choruses and idiom become slightly fuller. In case you haven't noticed, I'm really finding it difficult to make myself continue to write about it.

The singing was quite good. I have banged the Bryan Hymel drum rather loudly on this blog, after what was the best Rusalka Prince that I've ever seen, and a decent stab at Enée, and here he was more than respectable. I think French doesn't suit him very well as it does funny things to his tone (it becomes covered and swallowed in the high reaches), but Robert is a role with several high Ds (!!!) in it, and I would not for a moment have imagined that he would be able to handle these. It's a relentlessly high part requiring great solidity and stability, which are his strengths, but he did seem a little taxed here though I find it difficult to think of many tenors who wouldn't be. Acting wise he did his best in this hammy role.

As Alice, Marina Poplavskaya sung the best I have ever heard her. For the first time I wasn't completely mystified by her continued employment by top opera houses. She has about five gorgeously full notes in the middle voice that have a mezzo like depth and colouration, and she is able to integrate this well with her lower range. The problem is her top which sounds like it's coming from a different throat and body. In the past when I've seen her she's been all over the place pitch wise, and displayed significant spread above the stave, but here these things were both impressively under control for her, and nothing she sang was actively offensive. But she does this horrible blatantly unsupported pianissimo in high lying passages all the time, which is so fluttery that she finds it difficult to maintain air flow, let alone a regular vibrato. It's amazing that she continues to do it, when the result is so embarrassingly inconsistent. I really do wonder whether she is really a mezzo - along with the already mentioned characteristics, like mezzos, she has a much easier time above the stave when the notes are loud (though relative to other big name mezzo sopranos, let alone sopranos she is still extremely unstable here). This voice is a bundle of contradictions though one occasionally feels that its easy size and those middle notes suggest that she could be much better than she is. The paradox exemplified in one note: there was one absolutely gorgeous sustained tone she sung in Act IV, straight in the middle of her sweet spot range wise, which was gleamingly rounded, unforced and deliciously dark. But after five seconds of truly golden sound, the vibrato wavered and the next five second were choked, wobbly and stressed. She got some genuine cheers at the curtain but icily barely acknowledged them. I remain baffled by her as an artist and performer.

The controversy with the role of Isabelle has been well documented elsewhere, and I won't go into it, other than that I feel very strongly for Jennifer Rowley who has been horribly treated in this whole episode. Patrizia Ciofi, whisked in at the last minute, also gave the best performance I have ever seen her give - making the voice sound lighter and fresher than it usually is, but also her legato was effortlessly smooth and controlled in her aforementioned Act IV aria, the vibrato narrow and attractive, and it was probably the musical highlight of the evening. The bottom of the range is atrophied (no chest notes, no volume, relying on the "Gheorghiu cover" for low notes to have some sort of presence which of course doesn't work), and the top is slightly hoarse, with the very top notes uncomfortably intense and slightly police siren like, but mostly I was surprised by what a good sound she was making, given that this is not at all a naturally beautiful or particularly distinctive voice. Quite impressive. She is an unsettling presence on stage I've always found, but she was very good here.

John Relyea, not a name I'd heard before, has a quite brilliant true bass voice that is large, very dark, steely, extremely even toned and very well produced. It's not a terribly warm sound, but his technique is quite formidable and he can sing high with apparent ease - I'm sure that he will make a significant Wagner singer in the near future. Maybe he'll be hired for the upcoming Parsifal? Or maybe he's not singing Wagner yet. By some distance the most impressive voice on stage and he reminded me quite a lot of a young Samuel Ramey.

The supporting cast were largely excellent, especially Jean Francois Borras as Raimbut. Conductor Daniel Oren did absolutely nothing to sell the score, and drew an unexcited, mediocre sound from the orchestra.

Avoid. Despite decent-ish singing, this opera is a complete waste of everyone's time.

Les Troyens at the ROH

25/06/2012


Where to start? This is a massive evening, 5 acts, 5.5 hours long, huge cast, huge chorus, huge sets, huge score. I do very much like Berlioz, the good bits are just so good, but he is so maddeningly inconsistent, and Les Troyens, a piece which should be his magnum opus, puts his defects as well as his strengths into stark profile. As an orchestrator he is of course superb, one of the most original and successful of all composers in this regard. Harmonically too he is an innovator, but more accidentally here - there's a strong feeling that he is working things out empirically chord to chord, piece to piece, which makes for some fantastic and fantastically odd moments, but it also can prevent him building in the larger range, and when he chooses to use such enormous canvases as he does in Les Troyens, this becomes problematic. The vocal writing is not what one might call glamorous - no chances to show boat for the principals, though it is all very demanding.


McVicar's production does its best to sort through this gigantically chaotic piece and like the score, succeeds in places and is found wanting elsewhere. Staging wise, the first half, comprising Acts I and II, which depicts the fall of Troy to the Greeks, was most successful. At the outset of the opera we are presented with the curving outer wall of the now no longer besieged Troy, the chorus singing joyously about the Greeks mysterious retreat. Cassandra of course is less than convinced. McVicar has chosen to update this to the early half of the 19th century, a period he seems to love. I'm not sure if he has a particular war in mind that he was translating it to, but it basically worked. Early reports suggested that he was doing one of those horrible mixing of all cultures thing again, like the disastrous Aida, but if this was the original intention, there was very little sign of that here - aside from odd anachronisms created by the updating (pagan rituals and gods in Christian times) it was basically all from this period.


The Trojan horse when it came was absolutely magnificent - only the head was seen on stage, beautifully lit, descending slowly on the audience, and moving with so many degrees of freedom that it seemed like a living horse, rather than a wooden one. In fact it was made of lots of welded together Greek arms - cannons and muskets and the like, a nice touch that added to the idea of it as a peace offering (but also simultaneously as a massive warning of the threat it contains). At the end of Act 2, its mane becomes a flaming wall of fire, and it breathes fire. It's difficult to describe how awesome the sight of it is, and its basically worth the price of admission for this alone.


As Cassandra, Anna Caterina Antonacci is quite splendid and she received the biggest ovations at the end of the night. The intensity of her delivery is thrilling, though I did think that she was given a bit too much scene chewing to do by McVicar - I wishes all her actions had been a bit less OTT, or perhaps it would have been better to have her completely batshit insane, and really extreme. She's 51 now so naturally the voice is no longer quite what it once was, in terms of beauty or flexibility or volume, but its still very in tune, basically does what she wants it too, and she's expressive and very much gets the point across, so one never wishes for something else from her. Fabio Capitanucci is her fiancé Coroebus and is presented as an insensitive, pompous idiot, barely looking at her, let alone listening to her dire warnings - McVicar seems to have drawn a blank as to why on earth these two characters are courting - so different are they in every way, and they don't seem at all comfortable on stage as a couple. He sings well, though there are even less glory moments for him than the other leads.


One of the most affecting scenes was the royal pageant in Act I, which culminates in the presentation of the horse. Hecuba is superbly acted by Pamela Helen Stephen, maybe the best acting I've seen on the ROH stage this year - such dignity, subtlety and commanding presence. It's a tiny role and barely a singing part - I don't think there even are any solo lines for her and initially I thought they had just hired an actress who was mouthing the choruses. Truly spell binding - if only all opera acting could be this good! The slightly bigger role of her husband King Priam was also superbly acted by Robert Lloyd, here portrayed as ancient and verging on infirm, getting by on pure grit and ineluctable authority.


This sort of genius in small moments characterised the whole evening. Many of the small roles were wonderfully taken by Jette Parker Young Artists - Jihoon Kim made a very good Ghost of Hector and Barbara Senator a very good Asanius (and doesn't she look like Nina Stemme here!). Even better were Ji-Min Park as a slightly breathy, but very beautiful sounding Iopas, Hanna Hipp who sounded magnificently rich and dark in the larger role of Anna, Dido's sister, and also veteran Brindley Sherratt in wonderfully booming voice as Narbal. Not a single cast member in fact was found wanting.


Acts III to V chart rockier ground dramatically, though the most beautiful music is to be found here. I wasn't very keen Es Devlin's sets here, which were a sort of cartoony false perspective Carthage, with a central disc with a tiny buildings on it which Dido strolled around. Despite everyone wearing brightly coloured and boldly patterned African garb (though I fear there may have been other cultures mixed in there), there was of course only one black face to be seen on a stage of over 100 people, which gave everything a rather surreal look that didn't seem to match to any recognisable culture. Took me a while to realise that that was why it looked so weird.


The music of Act III is mostly on the less inspired side, notably excepting a surprising dance for girl peasants in the middle which is exquisitely scored and has a very beautiful melody. As Dido, Eva-Maria Westbroek is a much more glamorous voice than Antonacci, but she seemed lost as Didon dramatically. Didon is the "people's princess", but for McVicar that means touching the crowd like a pop musician, hollywood smiles, and hugging children. There's not one hint of nobility in this characterisation of Dido (I place the blame at McVicar's feet), and it's not until her Act 5 monologue that a compelling three dimensional character emerges. She sings very well though, best of all in this monologue, unleashing a time stopping pianissimo on the final note. I wasn't all that moved however. For me there's a slight loss of lustre compared to a few years ago and I hear the beginning of spreading on her top notes. Still this is very nice singing.


Little happens in Act IV, but it's a string of pure delights musically. First the Hunt and Storm Ballet which is simply one of the best pieces of ballet music between Rameau and Tchaikovsky. Then Narbal's aria, another wonderful ballet sequence, Iopas' aria, Aeneas' tale and then to even more wonderful things: the ravishingly beautiful septet which is probably the most beautiful number in the whole opera, and then the almost as lovely but slightly prolix duet for the lovers. This is basically number opera, in stark contrast to some of the earlier acts which seems to aiming at somewhat larger dramatic units and scenas. This wild eclecticism of style is one of the reasons why Les Troyens remains problematic, but it also where many of its charms lie.


As a side note, the dancers all had modern hair, with a couple of the men having cool hipster haircuts. This sort of thing maddens me - when it just clearly hasn't been thought about. Antonacci had contemporary hair too, possibly excusable because she's a wild woman/prophetess, so we'll forgive that, but the dancers really annoyed me. Also, dancers make the worst actors ever - they are trained to always extend to the maximum, expand gestures to exaggeration, and the result is pure irritation and unbelievability. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this.


Act V revealed Bryan Hymel to be perhaps the star of the show as Aeneas. (Maybe?) He has a bad rep in London after singing a Don Jose a few years back that seems to have been universally slated. He was magnificent however in the ROH Rusalka earlier this year, and he is again very good here. Stepping into Kaufmann's shoe's is never going to be an easy task, but Hymel is so different and so excellent that I only occasionally got pangs of regret about Kaufmann's absence. Enée is a famously ungrateful role in that it is a shockingly difficult sing, but has few glory moments compared to the women in this opera. But Hymel really made something of it here, never sounding overtaxed, and his top notes are a treat. Really magnificent singing this, and he's only 33 so he's only going to get better. Maybe I am overstating things, but he's definitely someone I'll be watching from now on.


There's way too much to mention in this production to go into more than cursory detail, but overall the good significantly outweighs the bad - definitely try and see it, if only for the reason that its so rarely done, and also to see that beautiful horse apart from anything! It's not a stunning evening of drama and it only just about coheres, but again like the score, this production presents a series of wonderful scenes which are hugely enjoyable taken on their own.


Antonio Pappano is in the pit with the ROH orchestra and he clearly believes in the score passionately. Plenty of wonderful moments and as always he's just so good at supporting the singers. The ROH Chorus were on fine form too. Too tired to write any more now!


This is a four way co production between the ROH, Vienna State Opera, La Scala and San Francisco opera, so it is definitionally coming to an opera house near you soon.

Rusalka at ROH

27/02/2012

I have a particular love for Czech repertoire, and Dvorak's Rusalka is one of its most precious jewels. Like Eugene Onegin, Pelléas et Mélisande and Bluebeard's castle, it's a sort of one off, never to be repeated perfectly itself opera, a serendipitous meeting of composer with subject matter, libretto and sound world that just works beautifully well to create something truly unique. The luminosity of the orchestration, superb musical characterisation and differentiation of the different roles, ravishing beauty of the harmony and melodic fecundity make this a very special work (like so much other late Dvorak - so many pieces seem uniquely special!)

Astonishingly this is the first time it's been staged at the Royal Opera House (two concert performances were given with Fleming and Mackerras in 2003), and for the occasion they have imported a 2008 production from Salzburg originally directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Seymour, with revival direction by Samantha Seymour. Whilst this is an "updating" to modern dress (not that the original has a date), elements of the mystical remain - Rusalka really is a water nymph initially, her sisters feral wood spirits scuttling around in their opening scene with alarming velocity and singing almost flawlessly. Along with these characters, Rusalka's father Vodnik and the witch Jezibabu, ironically herself crippled, all live in some sort of half ethereal realm (denoted by a subtly shifting, ever drifting stage and projections on the set) in a state of decay, moral and physical (both the surrounds and themselves). That Rusalka's father is sexually aroused by his daughter's sisters introduces the dark undercurrents of deviant sexuality and abuse that permeate this work - though initially at least the girls are free and wild. (Presumably they have a different father - we never meet Rusalka's mother, but a potentially polygamous woman in the background already provides a subversive and very non Christian family picture). His neglect is obvious too - whilst Rusalka sings idealistically of her longing for love (she seems very young with her cuddly toy - her craving for love at this age further suggests his neglect), he barely listens, waving to and flirting with the nymphs.

Later, in the third act, he and Jezibaba have captured and imprisoned the nymphs as sex workers in a seedy lounge brothel - they are forced to lavish their false affections on the Gamekeeper while Jezibaba hungrily undresses the Kitchen Boy. Their nervous twitching and animalistic behaviour cement this picture of desocialisation and ritual abuse, and they soon grab their chance to escape. Vodnik's sententious moralising here and at the beginning sickens though also moves: we cannot but give into this ambiguity - he seems to love his daughter whilst also hatefully controlling and destroying young women who seem so similar to her.

Meanwhile the love of a man is destroying his daughter - in this production the prince seems more torn than he is often shown to be, and comes to her rescue when she is mocked by the towns people, but mostly he is a narcisist and is mainly concerned with his own rapturous feelings. When Rusalka proudly totters out to meet him with her new legs looking like some incongruous stepford wife he serenades her endlessly (and it has to be said gloriously!), obsessed with her beauty, but seems uninterested in her true identity.

In the end Rusalka, unable to capture his attentions and possessed by grief, commits suicide, her disturbed sisters barely seeming to notice, though Vodnik weeps over her corpse. The final scene seems to be largely internal/psychological for the prince - Rusalka haunting his conscience when he realises what he's done to her. In the end she is left in a sort of terrifying limbo, static, unfeeling, destroyed.

I could go on with this sort of analysis, but ultimately of course everyone will take their own meaning from it. This is an interesting production, not always perfectly executed, but quite well thought out, visually strong, if not beautiful, and powerful in its impact. It is not, as Rupert Christiansen seems to suggest, intellectually abstruse (seriously have to wonder sometimes with this man). The constant questioning of what is real and what is imagined, what is psychological and what is magical is not a weakness and perfectly in keeping with the ambiguity of the libretto. The three views of the cat we get - as a stuffed toy, in a comic pantomime with a person in a cat costume, and then with a real cat suggests this as strongly as anything does. Sometimes the acting is not quite up to the ideas especially from the two leads, but in general the ideas came across well enough, and I was rather moved by the end.


There was a general air of incomprehension from the audience which I found perplexing - this was pretty simple person-regie and none of it seemed that difficult to interpret to me. Lots of people were grumbling about relevance (especially the young people) but all of it seemed exactly in line with the themes of the opera to me, even if not presented in a traditional fairy tale setting. The production team was met with heavy boos. Depressing that audiences are so reactionary, especially when there were were so many young people here. My guess is that people wanted romantic tragedy, not sexual immorality and grime, but in this story the two are really so far apart: it's just a matter of perspective.


Musically this was a very strong evening. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has the measure of this score and coaxed some gorgeous playing out of the ROH orchestra particularly the winds and strings. There was always a feeling of symphonic weight and purpose, whilst simultaneously being flexible and sensitive to the singer's requirements. Pretty ideal then. One thing grated: intonation from the brass was often slightly questionable, particularly the principal trumpet which has several rather exposed solos. But overall a very strong show from both conductor and orchestra.

I didn't like Camilla Nylund's Rusalka very much I have to say. The voice is quite light, silvery when quiet which seems ideal, but there's no weight in the lower register, and the higher she sings and the louder she sings, the less focussed the sound and the wider the vibrato gets. Virtually every climactic high note was between a quarter tone and a semitone sharp. This lack of focus means the voice just doesn't cut through the orchestration in the climaxes. Additionally there's little sense of legato and not much colouring of the line or use of the text for expression. I actually didn't completely dislike it, wasn't as awful as all that - the voice is generally secure and quite attractive, it just doesn't quite deliver when it needs to. The three Wood Nymphs (Anna Devin, Madeleine Pierard and Justina Gringyte) were all Jette Parker Young Artists, and all were very very good indeed - best I've ever heard from the Young Artists programme. Whoever was singing the first nymph (the cast sheet was not specific) I would genuinely have preferred hearing as Rusalka - her tone was sweeter and her pianissimos were unbelievable.

The rest of the cast were superb too. That Czech is fantastic language to sing in was amply demonstrated by Agnes Zwierko as the witch Jezibaba and Bryan Hymel as the prince. Zwierko has a very unusual sounding voice, very large, very rich throughout (with obvious registral breaks), but she really digs into the text using the language's wonderful consonants and also has a huge palette of vocal colours to draw on. The Prince is a difficult role to cast as it needs fairytale sweetness but a significant amount of heft - Hymel was pretty ideal I thought - taking full advantage of the pure vowels of Czech to create a juicy, ringing Italianate sound. Rock steady and warm all the way through the voice, his high notes superbly rounded. He seemed to drift about a bit on stage, not the greatest actor, but seriously fine vocalising.

Alan Held was a very good Vodnik, the voice resonant and clear and big. Again absolutely rock solid all the way through the range. No complaints here. Petra Lang sang the great role of the Foreign Princess pretty well - ideally this voice should be steely, dramatic and maybe even slightly squally to contrast as much as possible with Rusalka's ultra lyrical, silvery youthfulness - which just about describes Lang's voice - just a tiny bit more volume might have been welcome. Daniel Grice, also on the Young Artists Programme offered some beautiful singing in the small baritone role of the Huntsman. Gyula Orendt and Ilse Eerens as the Gamekeeper and Kitchen Boy respectively were both also very good in their scenes together. Rare that I'm this happy with a cast!