Dvořák’s opera Rusalka is rarely staged in its original setting. Instead, its fairy-tale plot, with a libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil that shares similarities with Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” about a water nymph craving to be human, is prone to receive a less fantastical framework emphasizing its pertinence to modern life. I’ve seen the titular protagonist as a prostitute in one production and as a ballet dancer in another, though at the Metropolitan Opera she has actually been a water nymph. For its first-ever staging of the work, Santa Fe Opera turned to the veteran director David Pountney, whose pioneering 1983 production for the English National Opera helped to clinch a place for the opera in the repertoire. For that production, Pountney set the opera in a nursery, and Rusalka was portrayed as a girl experiencing a sexual awakening.
The current production, forty years later, takes a similar, albeit new, approach. The institution holding Rusalka this time is a psychiatric hospital, though other little girls and stuffed animals typical of a nursery are present too. The sets (designed by Leslie Travers), encompassed by tall white cabinets stretching around the stage, look duly antiseptic. Rusalka is first seen having her leg bandaged. Still, she has enough youthful dexterity to climb atop a heap of floating chairs—risking further physical harm in the process—to sing her famous “Song to the Moon.” In another similarity to the older production, Rusalka’s father, the water sprite Vodník, is wheelchair-bound. More formidable is the witch Ježibaba, who seems to be on the hospital payroll, her workspace rolling out frighteningly from the wings. It is she who masterminds Rusalka’s transformations, which apparently involve cutting open the girl’s chest, given all the blood on her dress that afterward appears.
The transformation serves its purpose, however, by winning for Rusalka the infatuation of the human Prince for whom she longs. But their relationship is a volatile one, inhibited as it is by her inability to speak to humans (an onerous condition of her transformation) and the presence of a rival, the Foreign Princess, who arrives ostentatiously on a golden statue of a horse. The Prince’s palace retains the hospital’s cabinets, but it also, ominously, includes glass display cases exhibiting women. When Rusalka seems to be losing the Prince to the Foreign Princess, she finds herself, at least temporarily, in one such case. It’s no wonder that she begins to long for her former life, the return to which Ježibaba makes possible (after the imposition of further onerous conditions), the décor having fallen by now into a state of utter disarray.
Pountney’s staging deals persuasively with the opera’s moments of awkwardness while allowing its high points to shine, including the final scene, in which the Prince, his passion for Rusalka rekindled, pursues her even though he realizes that the conditions governing Rusalka’s transformations dictate that her kiss will mean his death. Fortunately, at this meeting Rusalka can now speak to him, making a real duet possible, unlike in their meeting of Act I where he does all the singing.
Ailyn Pérez gave a splendid performance in the title role, her soprano possessing a lovely, pristine quality that nicely suits the nymph, and her charm and slightly diminutive stature enhanced her credibility as the sprightly young woman central to the staging. Her “Song to the Moon” was appealingly tranquil, a quality enriched by a pianissimo second verse. A bigger voice would have been welcome in the the passionate solo episodes of her Act II duet with the Prince, but her tone never sounded insubstantial.
As the Prince, Robert Watson was also an asset, singing with clarity and temperament. He seemed to tire somewhat in Act III—the Prince’s grand heroic tune toward the end failed to make the impact it should have. Clad in a voluptuous black Victorian dress (the costumes were designed by Marie-Jeanne Lecca), Raehann Bryce-Davis was a forbidding, vocally imposing Ježibaba, who went about her diabolical business with unflappable assurance. Mary Elizabeth Williams, voluptuously dressed as well (though in red) as the Foreign Princess, also delivered some dramatically telling moments, but her tone tended toward cloudiness.
James Creswell did well as Vodník. The voices of Ilanah Lobel-Torres, Lydia Grindatto, and Meridian Prall blended resonantly as the Wood Sprites, a trio that harks back unmistakably to certain Wagnerian water creatures, and the comic scenes of the Gamekeeper and Kitchen Girl were spiritedly dispatched by Jordan Loyd and Kaylee Nichols.
Rusalka, composed in 1900, shows the influence of Dvořák’s great Czech predecessor, Bedřich Smetana, but it and his other ten operas also reflect Dvořák’s absorption of dramaturgical procedures of Meyerbeer, Verdi, and Wagner. Indeed, after Rusalka, some criticized his indebtedness to French and Italian opera. Its popularity today is attributable to many appealing factors, not least its rich melodic vein and colorful orchestral writing. The Russian-American conductor Lidia Yankovskaya was attentive to both in an energetic reading of the score, but she sometimes roused the orchestra to heights of volume that covered the singers.