This eco-conscious production of Rusalka by the RoH is the future
The Royal Opera House, in collaboration with directors Natalie Abrahami and Ann Yee, has embarked on its first eco-conscious production, Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka.
If you have ever thought that Hans Christian Anderson’s version of The Little Mermaid doesn’t really match the Disney spirit we associate with the tale, Dvorjak’s opera about the water nymph Rusalka is even bleaker.
This production intensifies the darkness, as the tale of love and curses is entwined with a message, warning of humanity’s greed and destruction of nature in search of profit, greed and lust. The beginning is much the same as the familiar fairy-tale, with Rusalka falling for a human Prince and begging the witch, Ježibaba, to make her human in exchange for her voice. However, in true operatic fashion, it ends with the spurned Rusalka cursed to lure men to their deaths and a repentant but ultimately doomed Prince.
To put a strong ecological message into an already tragic opera, leaves the production in tension with itself.
The message is translated through the production design in a rather obvious way, and as the story progresses the stage becomes littered with more rubbish, chastising humans for their excess. The courtiers in Act II are visual manifestations of ‘Big Oil’, and although their resemblance to today’s glitterati was uncanny, their costumes lacked finesse. This Rusalka was simultaneously too old-fashioned and too modern, too unrefined and too apocalyptic. Overall, unfortunately, neither here nor there.
This tragic love story just doesn’t quite work as an apocalyptic fairy-tale warning against the human impulse to destroy the earth, but that doesn’t mean it is unwatchable – it’s worth a trip for the singing alone.
Asmik Grigorian’s voice possesses a hauntingly beautiful tone, full of heartbreak and longing, making her a perfect Rusalka. The final kiss between Rusalka and her Prince, sung by the charming tenor David Butt Philip, is the emotional payoff of the whole narrative and was undeniably the highlight of this production.
Conducting from Semyon Bychkov is dreamy and light. The emotion lost in this introspective staging mainly comes from the pit, the swells and soars add some much-needed tenderness to the gradually building wasteland on stage.
I can’t help but feel as if this production might be wheeled out again as an eco-conscious offer from the Royal Opera House to buttress their green credentials.
Nonetheless, if the opera world is to take anything from this Rusalka, it should be to reflect on Yee and Abrahami’s process of creating an eco-performance. The importance of figuring out new ways to stage productions that are sustainable cannot be overstated. Hopefully, this is just the beginning.