Opera: »Rusalka« at the Berlin State Opera: Dvořák in the bathtub

Musically, we can report an almost entirely enjoyable evening. The State Opera debutant Robin Ticciati at the podium succeeds in making the score of Antonín Dvořák’s fairy tale opera “Rusalka” shimmer in many colors, and alongside Christiane Karg in the title role, there is also a top-class ensemble of singers on stage. However, the water world drawn by Dvořák, the contrast between nature and culture, between people and mythical creatures – this does not take place on the state opera stage.

The Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczós came up with the somewhat arbitrary idea of ​​having a Berlin apartment building recreated at considerable expense. Even during the overture, the elves are messing around in the shared kitchen while Rusalka lounges in the bathtub next door. The prince lives in the penthouse overlooking the television tower and has an ugly Norbert Bisky-style picture of three boys in swimming trunks hanging on the wall.

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It is an irresolvable dilemma: Unlike their colleagues from the spoken theater, the musical theater directors do not dare or would not even be able to edit and chop up the operas from the classical repertoire in order to make them suitable for their production ideas make. What then regularly results is something like contemporary theater with a “wrong” soundtrack. This also applies to Mundruczós’ “Rusalka” at the Berlin State Opera. The fact that the house is taking on Dvořák’s late opera success, the work that premiered in 1901 and has the status of a Czech national opera, is first and foremost to be welcomed without reservation. After the far too long Barenboim era with its future boss Christian Thielemann, the Unter den Linden house is facing more years of dark wheelwrighting. And even if the famous Christiane Karg in the title role with her flickering soprano is perhaps not the ideal choice for the mermaid, all the roles are very good to strong: Anna Kissjudit is convincing as the witch Ježibaba, Pavel Černoch as the prince, Anna Samuil as the stranger Fürstin and Mika Kares plays Aquarius with his penetrating bass voice. There’s nothing he can do to ensure that Mundruczós sees him as an “old ’68er.”

The director, who raves about the unique social mix in Berlin tenements in an interview printed in the program, does not seem to trust his idea of ​​reinterpreting the contrast between the water creature and the human being, this impossible love, as a class antagonism. In the third act things get even more Kafkaesque. The transformation of the mermaid into a human being, which is bought with her silence – a wonderful dramaturgical trick in musical theater! – reminds him of Gregor Samsa. Why not, it’s a piece from Prague. Poor Christiane Karg therefore has to crawl around in the cellar like a worm when the prince, who couldn’t get along with his silent lover, which is why their intense love quickly ended in scandal, returns to her in the end remorseful and dies a kind of lovesickness. Mundruczós says that he would find it inconclusive if Rusalka, who ends in the opera as “the will-o-the-wisp,” did not visibly transform again. “All sacrifices are pointless” is the conclusion at the end.

The story of Rusalka, who falls in love with the prince who is repeatedly drawn to her waters and is transformed into a human being using a magic potion – albeit at the price of being silenced – would now be a template for all sorts of questions of identity politics to negotiate. The fact that Mundruczós, who talks about seeing the opera as an “identity drama,” ultimately shies away from doing so in a striking way is certainly a good thing. Setting the entire plot on the different floors of the Berlin house and presenting the fairy-tale characters as profane contemporaries seems like an awkward solution. It is also doubtful whether he will succeed in inspiring a young audience for the piece, as he wishes.

Accepting the fairy tale opera from the turn of the last century as historical would probably be a prerequisite for approaching the material from a contemporary perspective. Attempting a frantic update, which in this case is not really consistent, only helps to a limited extent. There is no doubt that Monika Pormale’s stage design is very well done. One can speculate as to which piece it would fit with. Robin Ticciati, the chief conductor of the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, forgets this for a long time when he allows the “lyrical fairy tale” to blossom in both its tender and dramatic passages. This Berlin “Rusalka” would be fully recommended as a radio broadcast.

Next performances: February 11th, February 15th, February 18th, Berlin State Opera

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