Bára Basiková (Rusalka)
Bára Basiková (Rusalka)
Rusalka, a water nymph
Prince
Foreign Princess
Old Water Sprite
Witch
Hunter
Court Jester
Kitchen Boy
Water nymphs
guests at the castle
the Prince’s entourage
Setting: Meadow by a lake and the grounds of a castle
A meadow by a lake, surrounded by a forest. In the moonlight three water nymphs tease the Old Water Sprite, who responds good-naturedly. Rusalka calls to him from the willow tree where she is sitting. She asks about the immortality of the human soul and confesses in a brief, exquisite aria, „Often he comes here“, that she has fallen in love with a human, the Prince, who swims in the lake. Horrified that she wants to become human, the Old Water Sprite sinks into the lake, telling her that she must ask the help of the Witch. Rusa1ka in „Oh, moon high upon the deep sky“ calls on the moon to tell her beloved that she waits for him. She then turns to the Witch who agrees to let her walk on the earth but warns her that if she does not find love as a human being she will be accursed forever. Undaunted, Rusalka begs the Witch to transform her, and in a humorous conjuration scene („Abracadabra“) the Witch turns her into a human being, except that she cannot speak. As the warnings of the Old Water Sprite fade with the night, dawn brings the sound of hunting horns. The Prince, feeling strangely drawn to the lake, sends his retinue home. He sees Rusalka; bewitched by her beauty he takes her home to the castle. The end of this act is one of Dvořák’s most effective. He circumvents the difficulty of having no opportunity for a love duet by providing the Prince with lyrical repeated phrases over a magnificently sustained accompaniment.
The grounds of the Prince’s castle. The Gamekeeper and the Kitchen Boy, whose music is breathless and has affinities with the idiom of the bagpipe song, spin tales of the forest and gossip about the strangeness of the Prince since he met Rusalka in the woods. The Prince is to marry Rusalka, but he is frustrated by her silence and frigidity. During an exchange in which he tells her desperately that he must win her, a visiting Foreign Princess reproaches the Prince for neglecting his guest. As evening falls, other guests arrive for a ballet, dominated by a graceful polonaise. As the merrymaking continues, the Old Water Sprite appears in the lake, lamenting Rusalka’s fate and singing about her future rejection.
The second act begins with the bridal chorus sung by the guests. Rusalka, who has become gradually more intimidated by her surroundings, rushes into the gardens and, suddenly recovering her voice, begs the Old Water Sprite to help her. Her desperate outburst takes the form of an effective, though conventional aria, „Oh, in vain it is, in vain“; rejected by the Prince, she can neither live nor die. The Prince, accompanied by the Foreign Princess, is dissatisfied with Rusalka; he professes his love for the Foreign Princess whose music has a dotted, perhaps Polish rhythmic quality. Despite the passionate nature of her duet with the Prince, the music remains deliberately cold. At the climax of the duet, Rusalka intervenes and is pushed away by the Prince. The Old Water Sprite pronounces his vengeance as the Prince appeals to the Foreign Princess for help. In a cruel and cutting couplet, she tells him to follow his love to hell.
The meadow by the lake. Rusalka is mourning her fate. The Witch offers the possibility of returning to her original form if she murders the Prince. In fury and horror Rusalka refuses and sinks sadly into the lake, only to be rejected by her sisters. The Gamekeeper and the Kitchen Boy ask the Witch to help the Prince who has fallen ill since Rusalka left. Enraged by their tenacity, the Old Water Sprite emerges from the lake and chases them away. A divertisement follows for the three water nymphs, who sing of their loveliness and tease the Old Water Sprite. He responds sadly and in a passage rising to an extraordinary climax tells them of Rusalka’s cursed state. The Prince, delirious, comes looking for Rusalka and asks her to return with him. She tells him of her fate resulting from his rejection and that now a kiss from her would kill him. He begs her to kiss him and give him peace. This climactic passage is relatively brief, and although the Prince and Rusalka do not sing simultaneously, the relative simplicity of the music is poignant. Rusalka asks for mercy on his soul and accepting her sad fate disappears into the lake.