Rusalka

Story

Part I

Rusalka wants to leave the world in which she lives with the water sprite Vodník and the witch Ježibaba. She longs for an ideal world and an ideal love. Vodník warns her, but when he sees that his warnings are futile, he sends her to see Ježibaba. She promises help, but the price is high. The prince meets Rusalka. Rusalka’s naturalness, contrasting with his own world, captivates him and he takes her to his castle.

Preparations for the wedding of the prince and Rusalka are in full swing. Among the guests is a foreign princess seeking the favour of the prince. He succumbs to her provocativeness and sensuality, so different from Rusalka. Desperate Rusalka seeks help from Vodník. He encourages her to fight, but it is too late. The prince has fallen completely under the spell of the princess.

Part II

Rusalka has returned to her world devoid of hope and disillusioned. Ježibaba offers her a way out, but she must kill the one who let her down. Rusalka refuses. As he comes to the end of his life, the prince realises that he has lost his true love. He tries to win her back. They meet again, but there are things that cannot be undone…

Insights

David Radok on his staging of Rusalka

Rusalka is written in the form of a fairy tale. The fairy tale treats reality quite independently of the general notion of reality. When we watch a fairy tale, we switch off our rational, logical thinking about what reality is and perceive the narrative in a different way.
In fairy tales, supernatural beings appear. Sometimes it is various monsters or dragons, in our case it is a water sprite, a witch, a water nymph, wood nymphs. Even the prince and the foreign princess kind of belong to the fairy tale reality. Neither of these characters fits into our general conception of reality. Whether it's about water sprite, witches, water nymphs or dragons, fairy tales are always about the representation of human characteristics. This is because fairy tales are not written by witches or dragons, but by people. Fairy tales work with symbols, metaphors and archetypes.

The way a fairy tale communicates with its audience is similar to the logic of a dream. In a dream, realistic things happen to us, only the context in which they take place is always shifted somewhere else. The dream and the fairy tale work with different approaches to reality, with elements that are not logically compatible in normal life, but here they work quite naturally.
The symbols, metaphors and archetypes found in fairy tales are always about characters and relationships and contain the basic morality of good, evil, hate, love, vanity, generosity. These archetypes are quite clear in Rusalka - we have Ježibaba, Rusalka, Vodník, which is a family - mother, daughter, father.

Ježibaba is a woman who has had to experience deep disappointment in her relationships with men. She manifests herself in a psychopathic way, and at the root of her behaviour is a terrible pain, a disappointment in a relationship. And when she says to Rusalka, ‘You must kill him,’ it's not just about the prince, it's about killing the entire male race. The revenge that exists here comes from her. This fairy tale family is not ideal, and that's why Rusalka wants to get away. She wants to escape to something closer to the ideal, to a dream world of love where there is no creepy, aggressive water sprite or witch. The fact that Rusalka is initially unable to walk is a normal psychosomatic condition. It is even said in Czech, ‘I can't go on like this, I can't go on like this.’ In the second act, when she is mute, it is a question of confrontation - she has dreamt a world of love and a prince, but suddenly the bubble bursts, everything breaks, and she is unable to speak, unable to speak.

Prince is the archetype of the playboy who is tired of the company of high society women. He finds himself in the woods, hunting. He wants to experience something different and suddenly sees a girl from the countryside. He says to her, ‘I know you're magic that will pass, but until it does, it's beautiful.’

The three nymphs represent a clear archetype of the erupting eroticism. I have not encountered an opera that has as many erotic and relational overtones as Rusalka. In the first scene, the three nymphs are play with the Water sprite, and in the second scene Rusalka says: ‘Here she often comes and rises in my embrace; he throws off his clothes on the dyke and bathes in my elbows.’ This is a distinctly erotic vision. He is there naked and she is embracing him. Every scene encourages some kind of relationship. When the chorus sings ‘White Flowers along the Way’ - that's a clear symbol, white flowers, that's purity, virginity, incorruption. When he sings about red roses, it's passion. The Water sprite comes and sings: ‘On the waters a white water lily’ - the water lily is a clear symbol, above it is a flower, but below it is anchored in the mud. These are symbols and metaphors that few people perceive today, but in 1900 they were perfectly clear.

There are things in life where you say, sorry, and it's all good. But the pain the Prince has caused Rusalka is something she might forgive him for, but something has broken inside Rusalka and it is over. At a certain age, one realizes that there are mistakes one cannot undo.