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| Images: Monika Rittershaus Rusalka (Nadja Mchantaf), Ježibaba (Nadine Weissmann), and her son (Marcus Wagner) |
(sung in German)
Rusalka – Nadja Mchantaf
Prince – Timothy Richards
Ježibaba – Nadine WeissmannVodník – Jens-Erik Aasbø
Foreign Princess – Karolina Gumos
Gamekeeper – Ivan Turšić
Kitchen Boy – Christiane Oertel
First Wood Nymph – Annika Gerhards
Second Wood Nymph – Maria Fiselier
Third Wood Nymph – Katarzyna Włodarczyk
Huntsman –Johannes Dunz
Ježibaba’s Son – Marcus Wagner
Barrie Kosky (director)
Anisha Bondy (revival director)Klaus Grünberg (set designs, lighting)
Klaus Bruns (costumes)
Bettina Auer (dramaturgy)
Chorus of the Komische Oper, Berlin (chorus master: David Cavelius)
Orchestra of the Komische Oper, Berlin
Henrik Nánási (conductor)
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| Prince (Timothy Richards), Rusalka, and Foreign Princess (Karolina Gumos) |
I shall not beat about the
bush: this was just what opera should be. It convinced this sceptic that a
repertoire system can not only work, but work uncommonly well. Barrie Kosky’s
intelligent, thoughtful production, Henrik Nánási’s similarly intelligent
conducting of the excellent Komische Oper orchestra, and a splendid cast (with
a true star, in the best rather than the ‘celebrity’ sense, in the title role)
combined to enchant, to challenge, and to move. There is an openness to the
production and performance typical of so much of the best opera at the moment
It is only a certain class of
reactionary adults who will refer to something as ‘just’ being a fairy tale.
Children and thoughtful adults know that the world of the fairy tale is dark
indeed. (And yet, the number of anodyne productions of Hänsel und Gretel the world must suffer continues to grow! Thank
goodness for bold exceptions, such as that
of Liam Steel earlier this year, for the Royal College of Music.) Look
closely, or even just permit yourself to be receptive, and you will find that
it is all there: sex, violence, sorrow, tragedy. The Grimm Brothers and other
collectors were not interested in an adult’s sentimental creation of ‘childhood’.
Nor, however, were they out to shock. They did their collecting, their editing;
they certainly were not passive. But they wanted to let the tales speak in some
sense – however illusory this idea may be as an ‘absolute’ – ‘for themselves’.
So, I think, does Kosky here, mediated, as it most likely must be, via the
nineteenth century, in which the opera was (just!) written, and of course by
what has happened since. Indeed, an interview with Kosky and Patrick Lange –
the conductor, I presume, when the production was new, in 2012 – opens with
Kosky declaring: ‘Rusalka muss ein
Märchen sein!’ (‘Rusalka must be a
fairy tale.’)
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And so, without danger of prettification
or ‘mere’ folklore or folklorism, the story is, with great strength, quite
without varnish, placed centre stage, literally and figuratively. Klaus
Grünberg’s set design unfussily suggests the Komische Oper’s interior itself;
we are all staging, after all, not least those of us in the audience. The cold
elegance, moreover, of the late Victorian wall and, crucially, door – that is
where, even how, things change, the action moves on – is all the framing we
really need. We concentrate on the wood nymph herself and her plight. Above
all, her mermaid’s tail, with which she struggles in such heart-rending fashion,
leaving her desperate to become ‘human’, only for matters to become worse when
she does, sears itself into the memory, as does the fish skeleton that emerges
from within following the shocking butchery of the witch, Ježibaba. A (Danse) macabre
convention of skeletons, spirits of death, and so on we see in the third act (of
the opera ‘itself’, for here, we have only one interval) chills without undue
grotesquerie; all is very much in the spirit of a fairy tale that is anything
but ‘mere’. (There is no literalist river by the meadow here, but there is
water, which, when we see, even feel, it, thereby makes its point all the more
clearly.) The subconscious is clearly at work, but never in laboured, didactic
fashion. That, after all, is not the way of the subconscious. And we make what
we will of it; that, after all, is its way.
At the heart, in more ways than
one, of the performance was Nadja Mchantaf’s superlative performance as Rusalka.
She captured, in gorgeous, never self-regarding, vocal tone, the longing, the
dreaming, the sadness, the heartbreak. Her stage presence, again entirely at
the service of the drama, was second to none. One could read into her
frustration as much – or as little – more as one wished, or rather as one’s
subconscious wished. Mchantaf’s ability to capture ‘girlish’ sweetness, not
necessarily unalloyed, and desire, indeed desperation, for something more will
linger long in my memory. Rusalka’s unknowing imitation of the Foreign Princess’s
knowing sexual advances upon the Prince were perhaps saddest of all. Karolina
Gumos herself brought old-style glamour to a stage-stopping performance as the
Princess, seductive in voice as well as in her shameless yet never inelegant display.
Timothy Richards’s honestly perplexed performance as the Prince occasionally
edged towards vocal strain, but never excessively so. Jens-Erik Aasbø brought a
sense of the deeply, sternly primæval to Vodník, the Water Goblin, lamenting
Rusalka’s fate, refusing to grant her false hope. Nadine Weissmann, Frank
Castorf’s Erda, was perhaps always going to court that comparison,
especially when singing this opera in German, but I was just as interested to
hear how the role differed; her malevolence and yet also her personal,
hinted-at tragedy shone through with what was, I think, the blackest of humour.
Kosky’s conception of both goblin and witch as mediators between two
irreconcilable (dream?) worlds was in excellent hands – and voices. There were
no weak links, and a true sense of old-fashioned – in the best sense – company
lifted every contribution. One final mention should go to the splendid trio of
Wood Nymphs, Rhinemaidens in the making – or is it the other way around?
Nánási’s conducting traced the
ebb and flow of Dvořak’s score very well. Opening in perhaps more formalistic
fashion – not at all inappropriately so – this reading acquired impetus, even aqueous
dissolution, of its own, rather as if the composer were ‘progressing’ from
something more Schumannesque to the world of Tristan. In a sense he is, and one can certainly here proximity in
some of the later harmonies. The orchestra and chorus glistened and glowered,
equal partners – at least – in a drama more compelling still than most of Dvořak’s
symphonies. Lange, in that interview, actually drew comparisons with Mahler,
and compared the opera to ‘eine gensungene Sinfonie’. Nánási seemed very much
to follow in his footsteps, St Anthony’s preaching to the Mahlerian fishes as
ever going (tragically) unheeded.
