Rusalka

Rusalka is a fairytale of the Czech countryside, retold by the most famous of all Czech composers. Dvořák had already written eight operas and nine symphonies when he began work on Rusalka in the spring of 1900, and he seems to have felt an immediate kinship with Jaroslav Kvapil’s libretto. It was a natural fit for a composer steeped in the folktales of his homeland, but abreast of the latest developments in opera, including the intoxicating, emotionally charged musical language of Richard Wagner. Dvořák could hardly have been better equipped to evoke the enchanted natural world of the water spirit Rusalka, or to express the sensuality and passion of her doomed love for a human prince. Rusalka falls for a handsome human, but marriage to a mortal comes at a grim price. With the double-edged assistance of the witch Ježibaba, Rusalka accepts that risk and trusts in the power of love, only to find herself trapped between worlds when her prince proves to be all too human after all. Dvořák’s orchestra clothes this familiar European folk tale in all the red-blooded emotion and shimmering sonic beauty of an epic music drama. Rusalka’s best-known aria—the rapturous “Song to the Moon”—gives only a hint of the pageantry, poetry and soaring romantic atmosphere of this lushest of Czech fairytale operas.