[Met Performance] CID:314440
Metropolitan Opera Premiere
Rusalka {1} Metropolitan Opera House: 11/11/1993.
(Metropolitan Opera Premiere)
(Debuts: Kathryn Krasovec, Sylvia Strahammer
Review)
Metropolitan Opera House
November 11, 1993
Metropolitan Opera
premiere
RUSALKA
{1}
Dvorák-Kvapil
Rusalka.................Gabriela
Benacková
Prince..................Neil
Rosenshein
Princess................Janis
Martin
Jezibaba................Dolora
Zajick
Gnome...................Sergei Koptchak
Kitchen
Boy.............Wendy White
Gamekeeper..............James Courtney
First
Sprite............Korliss Uecker
Second Sprite...........Kathryn Krasovec
[Debut]
Third Sprite............Kitt
Reuter-Foss
Hunter..................Christopher
Schaldenbrand
Conductor...............John
Fiore
Production..............Otto Schenk
Set
designer............Günther Schneider-Siemssen
Costume designer........Sylvia
Strahammer [Debut]
Lighting designer.......Gil
Wechsler
Choreographer...........Carmen de Lavallade
Rusalka received nine performances this
season.
Production a gift of Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels
Foundation
Review of John W. Freeman in
"Opera News"
The season's
next Met first, "Rusalka," also marked the company debut
of its composer, Antonín Dvorák, though the work is a staple in his Czech
homeland.
No one familiar with the symphonies or Slavonic Dances needs to be
told that Dvorák had both lyricism and rhythmic energy to spare, but in "Rusalka" he relied much more on the former than the latter.
The score tends to lie still in the water unless stirred along by a conductor
more determined than John Fiore evidently was to get it moving.
The gloriously
intoned but rather inert title characterization of Gabriela Benacková may have
held him back.
Neil Rosenshein, too light and lyric a tenor for the Prince, came
into his own only in the lovely final scene.
Bass Sergei Koptchak, on the other
hand, was a pillar of strength as the Water Gnome, a father no less harsh, but
considerably warmer, than Lina's in "Stiffelio."
As a stage production,
designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen (costumes: Sylvia Strahammer) and staged
by Schenk, "Rusalka" emerged a veritable paean to
romanticism.
It might have helped to reserve for Act II the autumnal look of the
forest in Act I, but the lake had an alluring shimmer sorely missed in Act III,
where the pond appeared little more than a drainage ditch - given the paramount
importance of water in this story, a serious oversight.
The down-to-earth
rustics (the Gamekeeper and his nephew, the Kitchen Boy) were played to a
fare-thee-well by James Courtney and the terminally terrified Wendy White.
Their
counterpart in the natural/supernatural realm, Dolora Zajick as the witch
Jezibaba, had a romp, gloriously in her element.
Janis Martin, on the other
hand, rated well at the thankless task of personifying the inhuman side of
humanity as the Foreign Princess, all coldness, artifice and
disdain.
Photograph of Gabriela Benackova as the title role in
Rusalka by Winnie Klotz/Metropolitan Opera.
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