Poor Rusalka, woe, woe, woe. This is the repeated lament of a father watching his daughter try to turn herself into something she is not, destroying her sense of identity in the process. Dvořák’s water nymph who wants to be human speaks to the preoccupations of our times. The metaphor needs no labouring. The Czech composer, sturdy son of a butcher with a passion for wood pigeons and steam trains, had grasped the issues of body dysmorphia long before the modern name was invented. If you are born with a fish tail and fall in love with a prince who strides on dry land, the challenges are formidable.
Scottish Opera’s first production of Rusalka (1901) is a gripping triumph. More horror story than fairytale, despite its voluptuous score and woodland lakeside setting, the music pivots between the grandeur of Wagner and the jostling, needling clarity of Janáček. It is also the first opera Stuart Stratford has conducted in his new role as Scottish Opera’s music director. The company has endured its own painful reinvention in the recent past yet has produced some outstanding work, not least this season Handel’s Ariodante. In a fertile reversal of old patterns, two summer festivals have contributed to production and cast. Antony McDonald’s staging was created by Grange Park Opera in 2008 with Anne Sophie Duprels in the title role. She sings it again here. Stratford, as well as Duprels and several others in the cast, have worked extensively at Opera Holland Park. This Rusalka reminds us, in microcosm, how the UK’s operatic landscape has changed.
McDonald’s own concise designs – bright woodcut-inspired simplicity complete with boho goth dryads, fish kitchen and buckets of blood – match terror and beauty. Duprels remains a heart-wrenching Rusalka, tonally not always pure but capable of disarming expressivity. Willard White as her father, Vodnik, was a luxury bonus, voice strong as ever, anguish palpable. Peter Wedd (Longborough Opera’s Tristan, to press the earlier point) had fine, ringing top notes as the desperate prince. He doesn’t say the words “she’s a cold fish” when she fails to return his kisses but he might have done. Leah-Marian Jones’s imperious witch, together with Julian Hubbard, Natalya Romaniw, Clare Presland, all three singing dryads and some fine dancing mermaids completed a terrific cast. Stratford and the orchestra delved deep into the swirling melody and detail of Dvořák’s score, from the ripples and gurgles of low woodwind to the landlubber huntsmen’s brass fanfares to the final, puzzling optimism of the harp.
For 30 years the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has whisked us backwards in its eclectically appointed time capsule, initially to the baroque and classical eras but now progressing through the age of photography. Only a matter of time until we get Boulez on vintage electronics. Playing instruments familiar to late 19th-century ears, the OAE and conductor Vladimir Jurowski cast Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No 2 (1895) in an invigorating and lambent new light. The orchestra has toyed with Mahler before: they released Totenfeier on disc in 2012 with Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, sung by mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly. She was the fervent soloist on Tuesday, with soprano Adriana Kučerová alongside the vigilant Philharmonia Chorus.
At times raw, less oppressive than many modern orchestra performances, the whole felt quieter, more vulnerable and with an added sense of united effort at climactic moments. Leader Matthew Truscott, trumpeter David Blackadder, horn player Roger Montgomery, as well as all the woodwind and percussion principals, played with fearless commitment and apparent pleasure (note the many smiling violinists). The offstage brass whispered their contributions, letting rip excitingly when they entered the auditorium for the final movement.
You have to be expert in each family of instruments, probably a maker or player, to grasp the variables that make the sound so different. That rules out most of us. The secret may lie in the bore dimensions, flaps, blocks, tenons, rotary valves, double pistons – I’m busking – but the programme did not say. This is an instance where taking five minutes to demonstrate on the platform ahead of the performance – pre-concert talks are not feasible for everyone – would have armed the audience with just enough additional information. Now a complete Mahler cycle?
The new director of the BBC Proms, David Pickard, was chief executive of the OAE in its early years. He announced his first Proms season last week, much of which, concert planning being a long game, had been put in place by his immediate predecessors. As usual, during a questions session for specialist press the needle got stuck in that ever-worn groove that begins: “But there’s no…” This year organ music is off the menu and, 150 years after his birth, Busoni too. Time was when scheduling a composer in their anniversary year was seen as lazy, knee-jerk thinking. Evidently not scheduling one is an even worse crime.
Despite these enormous chasms I managed to find plenty of interest in the 75 main Royal Albert Hall concerts, 30 premieres, nine late-night proms, eight chamber music proms, plus others at the Roundhouse in Camden, Peckham car park and the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. Call me easy to please. Book early for the blockbuster events. In July, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville from Glyndebourne, Bernard Haitink conducting Mahler’s Symphony No 3 and John Eliot Gardiner with his ORR in Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet; in August, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with pianist Martha Argerich, and in the final weeks a throng of world-class German orchestras including the Proms debut of Christian Thielemann. General booking opens on 7 May. Promming tickets for the arena or gallery have leapt up from a fiver to £6. Sacrifice a couple of lattes, march past the wild-eyed Busoni pickets and go.
Star ratings (out of 5)
Rusalka ****
OAE/Jurowski ****
