The premiere of Antonin Dvorak’s “Rusalka” took place in Berlin

The Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden hosted the premiere of Antonin Dvořák’s Rusalka, directed by British conductor Robin Ticciati and famous Hungarian theater and film director Kornel Mundruczó. The premiere audience was clearly divided in its reactions: some expressed indignation, others admiration. Esther Steinbock In general, I joined the latter.

The phenomenology of operatic “boos”—expressions of audience dissatisfaction in musical theater—still awaits a separate, detailed study. As a rule, irritation in the audience accumulates gradually, and one can only guess in advance what kind of “booing” will fall on the creative team of the premiere during bows – but there it is still targeted, personal. In reputable opera houses, the main portion of indignation usually goes to the director. At Rusalka, in a hall filled, as often happens at Staatsoper premieres, with representatives of the older business and political establishment of Berlin, general irritation, like static electricity, began to accumulate soon after the start – and the first angry “boos” were sent to the action as such even before the intermission, after the first scene of Antonin Dvořák’s opera.

It is interesting that a significant part of the public, even in well-worn Berlin, apparently still expects that everything will be the same “as the author’s”, that is, the action will take place in a fairyland, on the shore of a lake, near Baba Yaga’s hut, called here Jerzybaboj. And when today’s Berlin appears on the scene, most likely, the fashionable district of Prenzlauer Berg, where on the ground floor in a large, neglected apartment, the living room and bathroom of which we see on the stage, along with part of the entrance and staircase, lives a group of young people of indeterminate occupation ( that is, a Merman guy and several girls, one of whom, the punking Rusalka, is clearly depressed and hiding in the bathroom) – when the premiere audience sees all this, they experience involuntary disappointment.

Moreover, when the pavilion, invented by the Latvian artist Monika Pormale (Muscovites know her primarily from the legendary “Stories of Shukshin” at the Theater of Nations), goes down, directly above the “bad” apartment there turns out to be no royal palace, but a rich penthouse with a terrace, open to the Berlin sky. Mermaid’s neighbor from above, a young man named Prince in the libretto, serves as a “social elevator” for her almost in the literal sense of these words. The neighbor on the floor, Ezhibaba, gladly takes on the role of an image maker – and turns the Rusalka, who dreams of a change in fate, into a hairdresser-like, dressed in all black, a prickly “vamp” princess with her mouth taped: in the company of the upper floors it is really better to keep quiet so as not to spill too much. The neighbor, also confused in his personal life and in conflict with his family, takes Rusalka from the first floor to the top. But there, among the paintings of contemporary artists and expensive furniture, happiness does not await her. And not only simple human, but also feminine: judging by how tenderly she strokes the half-naked young men in the picture hanging on the wall, the Prince is not interested in her as a woman. However, when he tenderly touches the same picture, the space for interpreting the reasons for the upset wedding expands even more.

By the end of the first act, which divides the second act of the opera approximately in half, it seems possible to derive a preliminary formula for the production – Kornel Mundruczo turned a romantic fairy tale into a critical, but well-developed, convincing social drama not without invigorating humor. British maestro Robin Ticciati looks like a responsible ally of the director – he reads Dvorak’s score in a very modern way, does not forget about the romantic colors of the composer, but does not revel in them, while he veils the motives of folk music, which would not rhyme too much with the “non-folklore” approach of the director. In addition, Ticciati is sensitive to the peculiarities of the soloists’ work, in particular, to the insufficiently strong voice of soprano Christiana Karg, who made her debut as the Rusalka. However, possible complaints against her should still be moderated, because in the second act Kornel Mundruczo gives her a serious acting test.

After disappointment and virtual expulsion from the penthouse, Rusalka, with the help of the same neighbor Ezhibaba, who discovered the abilities of an evil sorceress, experiences a disgusting transformation. And not just some arbitrary one, but the same one included in the title of Franz Kafka’s most famous work. Well, the premiere of Dvořák’s “Rusalka” once took place in Kafka’s city, so the “transformation” of the scene from Berlin to Prague is quite defensible. In general, by the end of the play, Rusalka Mundrutso not only loses her hair, but gains a long tail – she turns into a caterpillar and crawls away from people underground.

The stage design, in accordance with the archaic idea of ​​a “three-story” world, reveals in the third act another, basement floor, devoid of windows, touched by rot and mold, where some vile arthropods live. It is there, curled up in a ball, that the Mermaid waits for the Prince, whom in the finale she simply strangles with her slowly wriggling long eel-like body. The social drama, having turned over, again becomes a fairy tale, albeit a terrible, even nightmarish one. But the original, if you think about it, is also a brutal horror genre. And to make today’s viewer shudder, you need to go through at least Kafka. Probably, the majority of the audience finally realized that Kornel Mundruczo was right. And at the final bows, the stubborn “bugs” still lost to those shouting “bravo”.