WA Opera presents visual and vocal feast in Dvorak’s Rusalka at His Majesty’s Theatre

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WA Opera presents visual and vocal feast in Dvorak’s Rusalka at His Majesty’s Theatre

A smorgasbord of visual and vocal delights adorns the stage for WA Opera’s magical rendition of Dvorak’s Rusalka at His Majesty’s Theatre this month.

Director Sarah Giles and assistant Laura Hansford, with cast, chorus and WA Symphony Orchestra all under Chris van Tuinen’s baton, entice and enthral with myth, magic, and more than one reversal.

The overture stutters into life in a world of water nymphs submerged behind gossamer threads, looking up to an unattainable surface realm.

A swimmer plunges in briefly — video effects by David Bergman are constantly intriguing — as Water King (Warwick Fyfe) and daughter Rusalka (Elena Perroni) take centre stage to ominous strains.

Wood Sprites — Bella Marslen, Chelsea Burns and Brigitte Heuser — patrol a raised bank, eloquent and agile as a Greek chorus, stirring the action. Costumes by Renee Mulder capture lake and forest aesthetics with a hint of the macabre, and Charles Davis’ setting establishes dramatic tension between land above and water below.

Fyfe is immediately commanding in dark baritone voice and presence as harp (William Nichols) announces the heroine’s motif, running through the score like a silken thread.

Perroni’s celebrated “velvet soprano” tones modulate the rich texture of Dvorak’s drama, pleading for love and a human soul to soar towards heaven.

And there’s the rub: “… a soul. It is full of sin”, Water King warns. The higher realm is corrupt and fallen, whereas the water world below is pure. The first reversal.

Yet the swimmer has entered Rusalka’s orbit. Waif-like she keens out as light and mirrors isolate her siloed life for the ear-worm, Song to the Moon, delicately couched in harp, flute and strings.

Mirrors capture the reflective nature of water’s surface and reverse imagery in layered effects informed and enhanced by Paul Jackson’s lighting.

Camera IconWarwick Fyfe, as Water King, with Wood Sprites, in Rusalka. Credit: West Beach Studio

Cue the sorceress, Jezibaba (Ashlyn Tymms), spangled and jewelled to match her bright mezzo timbre. Mystic and magisterial, she metaphorically drains the swamp to free Rusalka, who must surrender her voice and the last vestige of her old life: her water veil, which Jezibaba adds to a shopping trolley full of tricks, mischief dripping from every glance.

Now the operatic heroine must go into the wider world, cold, alone and speechless. Water King mourns her fate as horns herald a hunting Prince (Paul O’Neill).

A hunter (Brett Peart) introduces the hero, leather-clad with rifle slung, seeking his “white doe”. Dismissing the hunters, the Prince embraces vulnerability as harp again announces the heroine.

O’Neill’s lyric tenor fits their tender meeting like a glove as water nymphs call out to Rusalka from beyond the mirrored meniscus of the lake. Too late, the moon-crossed lovers are already doomed.

Act II opens in the palace with Gamekeeper (Stuart Laing) and Kitchenhand (Brianna Louwen) as common people adding conspiratorial commentary to the plot.

Rusalka, constrained in skin-tight white gown with flounce hem, and the Prince in crisp tuxedo, reset the night in leisured formality.

But all is not right in paradise, whether above or below the water.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==Camera IconNaomi Johns, left, Paul O’Neill and Elena Perroni, centre, with the chorus for Rusalka. Credit: West Beach Studio

For one, Rusalka can’t do heels on stairs, comically casting them off in frustration. And her love rival, the Duchess (Naomi Johns), a polar opposite in puffed shoulders and ****** shift, makes a pointed entrance, icily referring to the Prince as “lover”.

Rusalka, still silent, can have no part in repartee. Stern stonework and candelabras overshadow her torment and Water King emerges, ghost-like at the banquet.

Trumpets announce revellers, their ball masks reflecting the smooth-faced denizens of the water world. Rusalka does her own reflecting, transformed in a copy of the Duchess’s frock, but still she’s on the outer. “Poor pale Rusalka,” Water King intones, against a frozen tableau of carousal that heightens her dilemma, trapped between worlds.

“White flowers on the path,” a choral number delivered with precision (movement director Lyndall Grant) and clear diction (Czech language coach Alzbeta Rekosh) further taunts Rusalka as Water King laments again “poor pale Rusalka”, playing up the vivid colour of human passion and the vestal purity of his realm.

Rusalka complains to Water King, the only being who can hear her across the great divide: “Neither woman nor water sprite, I cannot live, I cannot ****.”

Meanwhile the Duchess is having her way with the Prince. His tie is undone and she’s off the leash.

Rusalka’s challenge to them reinforces the Prince’s fickle disposition, and Water King’s rebuke crystallises the Duchess’s ire, bringing down the curtain.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==Camera IconElena Perroni as Rusalka. Credit: West Beach Studio

Act III returns to the lake and a teeming backdrop of nymphs and water lilies; a scene change that draws its own ovation.

Rusalka, stranded centre-stage in virginal white like a jilted bride, rues “heartless watery power”, with trills and thrills over swooning, swirling strings.

Now it’s Jezibaba’s turn for icy irony, but humour evaporates when she broaches the next circle of *****: only human blood can set Rusalka free.

Manipulative mezzo and supplicant soprano wrestle but conscience wins, and Rusalka throws the proffered blade into the lake; a reversal of the Arthurian legend.

Harp again consoles Rusalka, tormented by water nymphs damning her forever to haunt humanity.

Gamekeeper and Kitchenhand return, intent on saving Rusalka with help from Jezibaba, who they “find” in a fine piece of pantomime that ends abruptly with Water King’s vow of revenge and a cacophonous witch’s cackle.

Horns announce the hunting Prince, now penitently seeking his “white doe”. Harp flags her presence.

Each must seek salvation from the other and only one can survive. Rusalka’s retort is ethereal and visceral in the same breath: “You spoke of your passion but I could not speak of mine.”

Now, a fatal kiss is the Prince’s only path to peace, because his transgression goes beyond wrong-side love. His penitence frees her from her pedestal and one last act of love washes away sin.

More than brusque verismo, there is a numinous edge to this last scene. Water King rails against fate and human fallibility, but in the end Rusalka forgives and so finds her release.

Rusalka is at The Maj until July 27. Tickets at waopera.asn.au.

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