Alemania
Creatures in the water main
Jesse Simon
In
recent decades conventions drawn from cinematic genres have had their own quiet
effect on the nature of operatic productions. While the ‘body-horror’ subgenre
may seem too reliant on quick edits and special effects to be translated effectively
to the stage, director Kornél Mundruczó offered a credibly nightmarish version
in the fascinating – and occasionally frustrating – new production of Rusalka
at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. The oddities of the staging were mirrored
in the performances, which placed a generally strong cast – led by Christiane
Karg and supercharged by Mika Kares and Anna Kissjudit – against musical
direction (from Robin Ticciati) that often seemed indifferent to the beauty and
nuance of Dvořák’s score. If the resulting evening was somewhat uneven it was,
at the very least, never dull.
The
character of Rusalka belongs to a distinguished line of water spirits whose attempts
to live a happy life are thwarted by treachery of human passions. For all its
elements of folk mythology it is not a tale that needs to search very far to
find modern relevance and, for Kornél Mundruczó, it provided a solid foundation
for the story of a socially-awkward girl in present-day Berlin who assumes a
new identity – in this case a pale, silent goth – to win the affections of
the badly-dressed trust-fund hipster who lives in her building, only to be
rejected in favour of someone from the hipster’s own bourgeois milieu.
Dvořák: Rusalka. Robin Ticciati, conductor. Kornél Mundruczó, director. Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, February 2024. © 2024 by Gianmarco Bresadola.
The
first two acts made their critique of modern Berlin more through sets and
costumes than actions. Rusalka’s domain, a disorderly semi-squat occupied by a
dishevelled middle-aged burn-out and three free-spirited young girls, was just
one floor down from the converted Dachgeschoss with expensive light fittings
and views of the Fernsehturm where the Prince and his obnoxious entourage hung
out. In its contrast between the unreconstructed ‘old Berlin’ and the
encroaching gentrification of the twenty-first century, the staging occupied a
territory not far removed from the Staatsoper’s (magnificent) 2018 production
of Falstaff; if it seemed less essential to the story of Rusalka,
the familiar setting and its attendant social worlds nonetheless offered a
clear illustration of the uncrossable gap that separated the water spirit from
her prince. With the exception of a few eels fished out of the toilet by
Ježibaba during Rusalka’s transformation, there was little in the first
act-and-a-half to suggest that the staging was going to be anything more than a
class tragedy.
The
eels, however, proliferated in the evening’s second part (the interval occurred
around three-quarters of the way through the second act, presumably to keep the
supernatural elements out of the first half; it was a decision that made sense
dramatically but not musically). A long rubbery eel emerged from a painting to
entangle the prince at the conclusion of the second act and buckets of rubbery
eels fell from the ceiling onto the prince’s entourage as they sought the help
of Ježibaba; most significantly Rusalka herself went through a partial
metamorphosis between the second and third acts and was, in the final scenes,
part eel herself. The eel costume, intended perhaps to look like something out
of H.R. Giger, resembled an articulated puffer jacket in full light, but was
far more convincing when shrouded in fog and darkness; it was too well-executed
to be ridiculous – the fact that it didn’t undermine the final scene is a
tribute to its success – but not quite disgusting enough to be genuinely
disturbing.
Dvořák: Rusalka. Robin Ticciati, conductor. Kornél Mundruczó, director. Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, February 2024. © 2024 by Gianmarco Bresadola.
If
the sudden shift from cultural critique to body horror was something of a
curveball, it also transformed the staging into something considerably more
interesting than anything promised by the first two acts. Indeed, much of the
action in the first part had a disconcerting awkwardness, a handling of
characters that seemed wilful but ever so slightly off. The ‘ballet’ of the
second act – essentially Rusalka flailing her way through the prince’s empty
flat – ramped up the awkward to the point where there could be no doubt that it
was intentional, even if it never entirely justified itself. In the face of
such calculated discomfort, the obvious horrors of the third act came as
something of a relief.
One
could not help but feel sorry for Christiane Karg, who was forced to give a
performance of unreasonable physical intensity – which included crawling around
on stage dragging a giant eel costume behind her – while delivering a role that
demands considerable delicacy of voice. Did she know what she was getting into?
Nonetheless it was a remarkable performance: within the ostensible realism of
the opening acts there was not a scene in which her unmoored persona didn’t
throw things intriguingly off-balance; yet in the supernatural third act she
approached Rusalka’s change of physical circumstance with a bearing that made
the whole thing seem strangely plausible.
Ms
Karg was able to match the physical demands of the role with a vocal
performance that built in intensity as Rusalka’s plight grew more desperate.
Her Song to the Moon, which alternated passages of beautiful rhapsodic flow
with moments of deep introversion, didn’t quite receive the orchestral
accompaniment it deserved; by the time Rusalka had recovered her voice at the
end of the second act, however, Ms Karg had introduced a new level of dramatic
immediacy. The lament that opens the third act, despite a hint of strain in the
lowest passages, was gripping in its delineation of the tragedy, and her
contributions to the final scene were forceful and frequently radiant.
Dvořák: Rusalka. Robin Ticciati, conductor. Kornél Mundruczó, director. Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, February 2024. © 2024 by Gianmarco Bresadola.
The
evening’s finest performances, however, belonged to Mika Kares and Anna
Kissjudit. As the Water Goblin, Mr Kares was a continual delight, delivering
his scenes with absolute clarity, arresting fullness of tone and boundless
lyrical warmth. The character may be given to reprimanding Rusalka for her poor
life choices, but Mr Kares ensured that even his most critical moments
contained deep undercurrents of sympathy. His second-act solo scene was among
the finest moments of the evening, and his subsequent reunion with Rusalka was
infused with graceful melancholy; but when he let the Water Goblin’s full anger
take hold – as he did in his magnificent third act curse of the prince’s
retinue – the results were no less striking.
As
Ježibaba Anna Kissjudit was impressive both for her tonal range and the
dynamism of her performance. If her transformation of Rusalka had a note of the
cartoon witch, her subsequent outlining of the curse that would follow if
Rusalka failed to find love on land was deadly serious, delivered with an
intensity that elevated the scene into one of the first act’s most compelling
moments. Even at her most over-the-top – cackling madly or hurling rubbery eels
at the prince’s friends – she maintained such tight control over the
character that what could have turned into lazy comedy retained an unmistakable
air of menace.
Pavel
Černoch’s Prince had the staging working against him – the character was
presented, from the outset, as deeply unsympathetic, and subsequent appearances
only reinforced a general lack of redeeming features – but a number of his
scenes never quite took off: one wanted greater ardour in his first encounter
with Rusalka, and a more forcefully-argued sense of doubt in the second act
might have given the prince’s infidelity a sturdier dramatic foundation. Yet in
both of these scenes the pacing of the orchestra seemed at odds with Mr
Černoch’s conception of the character, and the final scene, in which he and Ms
Karg were locked into their own dynamic, was notably more successful.
Indeed
the musical direction of Robin Ticciati was highly variable throughout the
evening; his reading seemed governed by a spirit of precision and economy that often
ran counter to the strands of earthy vigour and luminous beauty that dovetail
throughout Dvořák’s score. There were a handful of climactic moments that
impressed by virtue of their abrupt force, but numerous passages that moved the
action forward with little attention to the opera’s capacity for lush romanticism.
Certainly anyone hearing Rusalka for the first time on this evening
might not have been convinced that it is a work equal in stature to Dvořák’s
final symphonies or late tone poems.
However
if the evening had its moments of frustration – both musically and theatrically
– these were generally outweighed by the conviction of the central performances
and the wealth of memorable imagery. The grotesque elements of the staging may
have been designed to appeal to a younger audience brought up on the visceral
thrills of body horror, but the logic that ran beneath the action yielded a
cohesive retelling, in which supernatural elements emerged as a necessary
amplification of Rusalka’s very human tragedy.
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