When you think of fairy tales told in song or on stage you probably think of the way Disney animation tells a story. So let’s use The Little Mermaid as an example. The 1989 movie, inspired by Hans Christian Anderson’s story, runs a swift 83 minutes. But imagine if you take both that story and the novella Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué as inspiration for an opera. That’s what Czech composer Antonín Dvořák did. But his version, written with librettist Jaroslav Kvapil, runs a little longer: 3 hours and 40 minutes (including intermissions.) San Francisco Opera opens a production of the composer’s Rusalka on June 16th for five performances through June 28th at the War Memorial Opera House.
The production, new to San Francisco Opera, comes to them vis-a-vis Lyric Opera of Chicago. David McVicar directed Rusalka there in 2014. In John von Rhein’s review for the Chicago Tribune, he wrote when comparing a then-running production at the Metropolitan Opera to McVicar’s production, “Well, eat your hearts out, New Yorkers. The plain truth is that the Met’s routine revival cannot hold a candle to Lyric’s far superior effort.”
Soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen makes her role debut as the title character, a water nymph willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to earn the affection of a human prince. Brandon Jovanovich plays the prince. The cast includes Jamie Barton as Ježibaba, bass Kristinn Sigmundsson as Vodník and Sarah Cambidge as the Foreign Princess.
The orchestra will be lead by Eun Sun Kim, who is the Houston Grand Opera Principal Guest Conductor. This is Eun Sun Kim’s first appearance at San Francisco Opera.
Rusalka, which had its world premiere in 1901, has not been performed at San Francisco Opera since its first appeared in the 1995 season.
Alex Ross, whose book The Rest is Noise is required reading for classical music fans, feels that Rusalka, while containing beautiful stretches of music, “wavers among various stylistic options. Certain moments soar into a Wagnerian mode, others follow a Smetana-derived national-opera pattern or even a hint of Mozartiana.*”
Opera lovers, however, warmly embrace Rusalka. Among the opera’s best-known arias is Song to the Moon. Frederica Von Stade sings the aria in this clip.
For tickets go here.
Photos by Todd Rosenberg/Lyric Opera of Chicago courtesy of San Francisco Opera
*This quote comes from a 1993 review of a Metropolitan Opera production.