Rusalka

Dvorak's opera, Rusalka, rapturously received by audiences at the Minnesota Opera Company's performance in late January 2016, is a baffling and idiosyncratic work -- not so much one work, as three one-act operas implausibly stitched together.  The first act, most of which takes place at the bottom of lake, involves a water nymph who has fallen in love with a mediocre princeling, a little swaggering, self-satisfied fellow.  The mermaid consults with her father, a Vorodnik, or water gnome who duly warns his daughter against consorting with humans.  But free will must prevail and the Vorodnik also uses his deep and monitory baritone to instruct his daughter that there is a certain witch, a Jezibaba, who has the power to convert immortal lake creatures into mortal human beings -- death, the inevitable price that the nymph must pay for her passion.  (Dvorak's opera contains another theatrical coup -- the water nymph, once human, must remain entirely mute, a perverse and extraordinary fate in a work of musical theater).  Rusalka, the nymph, consents to the transformation, and, as "a white doe" (presumably a euphemism for her nudity) encounters and seduces the princeling.  This act begins with water naiads taunting the Vorodnik in an obvious homage to Wagner's Das Rheingold and contains a long scene in which the surly gnome lectures his obstinate daughter, an exchange that seems related to Wotan's nagging at Bruennhilde in other episodes of the Ring cycle. 

The second act of Rusalka takes place in a fortress of brutalist Soviet-style pre-fab concrete.  In this unlikely environment, a sort of party is underway.  Needless to say, the beautiful, if mute, water nymph -- really more like a lobster or muskellunge than a human girl -- is profoundly out of place.  Furthermore, the princeling turns out to have a bellowing mezzo-soprano as a fiancée, a big woman dressed like a white wedding cake who howls at her lover and, completely, dominates the action with her imperious demands.  The human rival is made up to look like Cruella de Ville from A 101 Dalmations or other Disney harridans such as the evil Queen in Cinderella and the Seven Dwarfs -- she has the same ueber-Waspish appearance, complete with an indomitable and pointed chin.  (She also fully twice the size of the swarthy little princeling, a mismatch that contributes to the comic effect in this act). The human lovers in this act are lousy specimens, getting drunk, slapping one another, and brawling in a Polonaise staged as a slapstick ballet.  Needless to say, Rusalka is abandoned, appalled, and returns to her watery haunts where her soprano voice is restored to her.  This Act is generally comic, over-the-top and the best part of the show -- the wretched human lovers are funny to watch and the water-nymph's discomfiture at their behavior is appropriately pathetic.

The final act of the opera, again staged on the bottom of the tarn, is the most peculiar.  Here, Dvorak reverses his meanings:  the forsaken Rusalka, Czech for "water siren", becomes a kind of zombie vampire.  When her moronic human lover staggers into her embrace, she kills him with her icy kiss. This is a complete inversion of what the audience expects -- up to this point, the opera has played like a supernatural version of Madame Butterfly with the nymph in the role of the abandoned lover and the little, selfish princeling acting the part of the swinish Pinkerton.  Although the music swoons ecstatically, we have no sense of tragedy whatsoever about the death of the egocentric and fickle prince -- if anything, we sense that the fellow deserves his demise.  This aspect of the opera assumes the character of an ecological allegory -- human beings are depicted as cruel, their hands "red with blood," and the Rusalka complains that the princeling has injected anthropomorphic human passion into a being that is entirely indifferent and devoid of anything like mortal passion.  The price for this transgression against nature is death, a penalty that Rusalka metes out to the princeling while moaning and groaning about how sad she is to destroy her erring lover.  In the final moment of the opera, she stalks away from the corpse of the loathsome little prince while the music strives (and fails) to achieve a Wagnerian Liebestod.  This last act feels padded and, like much opera, contains a comically and interminably extended death scene.  There are also oddities -- the three mermaids who taunted the curmudgeonly Vorodnik in the first scene now seems to be wood nymphs or dyads:  we see them plaiting wild flowers into garlands before reprising their initial Wagnerian-inspired taunting of the gnome. 

Dvorak's music is curiously without memorable melodies although lushly and gorgeously orchestrated in the style of Strauss.  The libretto is poorly conceived and the viewer often has the sense that the music is struggling to catch up with what has already happened -- in several scenes, something occurs and, then, the characters sing about it later.  The soprano, Kelly Kaduce, a very beautiful woman, is memorable as the Rusalka and acts bravely -- she disguises her beauty in the last Act in zombie-revenant make-up and moves spasmodically as she is first learning to walk (and, later, struggling as one drowned at the bottom of the icy lake).  The staging was simple but effective, the bottom of the lake a wavering maze of watery reflections with great banners of sea-weed fluttering overhead.  Images of the natural world, including a vast, malevolent moon, were projected on the flats to good effect.  The audience delivered a standing ovation.  I thought the entire enterprise was puzzling and that the story was too strange in an oddly cerebral and over-calculated way to warrant much applause.