Rusalka
Now Closed
Booking Period
- Show Opened
- 27th Feb 2012
- Booking Until
- 14th Mar 2012
Running Time
What's it all about?
Rusalka has its first ever staging by The Royal Opera in a production new to the Company. Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito’s contemporary interpretation sets the opera in a seedy backstreet world of today to throw into sharp relief the dark wit and darker emotions of the opera’s story of love, desire and despair. Rusalka’s ‘Song to the Moon’ may be a favourite popular classic, but it is just one of many lovely vocal melodies in a richly Romantic score with the Czech folk inflections characteristic of Dvořák’s music. And it is also an orchestral showcase that the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House under Yannick Nézet-Séguin will relish, whether the grandeur of the Act II Festive music or the atmospheric depictions of the world of nature that suffuse the whole opera.
Who's in it?
The cast is an especially fine one: Petra Lang returns to The Royal Opera, and Camilla Nylund and Alan Held appear in the roles they took when the production was first seen, at the Salzburg Festival in 2008.
What's the story?
Drawing inspiration from the classic Hans Christian Andersen tale The Little Mermaid, Rusalka is the story of the daughter of a Water-Goblin, longing to become a human and have the Prince fall in love with her. After bargaining with the witch, she is transformed into a human without a voice - but must keep her Prince loyal, or face eternal damnation for them both. Though all appears well for the two lovers at first, a foreign princess threatens their happiness, and the tragedy begins to unfold.
