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This month’s audiovisual release is an absorbing new take on Dvořák's most widely performed opera, Rusalka. The Dutch National Opera production presents a remarkable inversion of the folklore surrounding the work's central fairytale, bringing it into a sordid, 20th-century world and giving its heroine an aspiration that we can all recognise – to escape poverty and crime and enter a world of Hollywood glamour and romance.
![DVOŘÁK, A.: Rusalka [Opera] (Dutch National Opera, 2023) (NTSC)](https://cdn.naxos.com/sharedfiles/images/cds/hires/2.110783.jpg "DVOŘÁK, A.: Rusalka [Opera] (Dutch National Opera, 2023) (NTSC)")
[Naxos]
Antonín DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)
Rusalka
Lyric fairy tale in three acts, Op. 114, B. 203 (1900)
Libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil
Raehann Bryce-Davis, Mezzo-soprano
Pavel Černoch, Tenor • Maxim Kuzmin-Karavaev, Bass
Chorus of Dutch National Opera
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Joana Mallwitz, Conductor
Philipp Stölzl, Philipp M. Krenn, Stage directors
With its wonderfully poetic and sensual score, Rusalka is Antonín Dvořák’s most beloved opera, filled with musical effects that evoke the beauty and magic of a world inhabited by nymphs and water sprites. Jaroslav Kvapil’s libretto is based on a famously tragic children’s fairy tale, but in this acclaimed reinvention by directors Philipp Stölzl and Philipp M. Krenn Rusalka is depicted as a young woman from the dark fringes of society. She trades her power of speech to live in Hollywood at the side of a handsome movie star but is doomed to remain an outsider and a lost soul.
Also available on Blu-ray Video (NBD0193V)