Rusalka

Rusalka has its first ever staging by The Royal Opera in a production new to the Company. The tragic story of the water nymph who longs to walk on the ground as a human draws on the richness of Czech mythology: a prince, a princess, a water goblin and a witch are the other main characters, mixing the supernatural and the mortal. 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 Dvorak's music. 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. 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.