A come-down: Rusalka at Glyndebourne
Rusalka
Glyndebourne Festival
Blue Upper Circle Standing 2, £15
7 August 2019
Glyndebourne page
Hindsight tells me that with a little extra forethought I could have predicted Rusalka at Glyndebourne would make a disappointing sequel to Tristan at Bayreuth. Rusalka intrigues me but has never moved me; and despite its acclaim director Melly Still’s The Cunning Little Vixen at Glyndebourne only annoyed me with its sexual faux-cutesyness. How different could her Rusalka be? And while Glyndebourne standing places are good value they hardly offer opera’s finest experience. But my love for Sally Matthews overrode all such considerations, which have anyway never been my strong suite.
After all that, Matthews didn’t sound her best. She has stunned me several times over the years, most powerfully in a concert performance of The Turn of the Screw. Her voice then was one of those with the quality of liquid gold, a pooling well of thick loveliness that flows with exquisite musicality. I don’t know if she’s changed or if it was just an unfortunate consequence of our high vantage point, but while the liquid was there the fluidity wasn’t: it was as though something obstructed the main channel of her sound, squishing that liquid loveliness round the edges to leave the whole sounding waffly and thin. The sound was pretty but without that focus Matthews’s musicality didn’t communicate, and the result was waring to listen to.
The rest of the cast was strong but didn’t make much of an impact; I attribute this to the opera itself, which doesn’t have a whole lot beyond the title character. In fairness I should admire Evan LeRoy Johnson’s Prince, a virile and confident sound combined with the physicality of an American football player; wholesome, heroic, but without the depth and ambiguity that Bryan Hymel brought to the role at the Royal Opera House a few years ago. Zoya Tsererina was ideal as the Foreign Princess, oozing disdain through a laser-bright sound, but her air time is limited. Patricia Bardon was uncharacteristically reticent as Ježibaba. Alexander Roslavets sang with great dignity as Vodník, musically very elegant but perhaps in fact a bit too graceful to make the most of this uneasy role.
Robin Ticciati often weaves magic at Glyndebourne (as with La Damnation de Faust earlier in the season) and I expected the Dvořák to be right down his avenue. But his case for Rusalka, while strong on heady fumes, didn’t crystallise into that clarity which has occasionally helped me sense the piece’s siren otherworldliness. Perhaps Ticciati was a little too measured in his folk rhythms, leaching from them the wildness that can hurl the characters forwards into their tragedy; or perhaps he was too handicapped by a Rusalka who didn’t lead the sound as she needs to.
Still’s production, new in 2009, is looking a little tired. No doubt had I seen it ten years ago, before I’d seen her Cunning Little Vixen with its focus on dance and a nicified vulgarity of the natural world, and before I’d seen the countless Laurent Pelly productions that use similarly dysmorphic costumes to convey society’s trappings, I might have thought it was more original. But time does not wait for such ideas, and I’m sure even Still would choose to direct it differently now. I do admire her commitment to the footlessness of Rusalka; but that was not enough to make up for what is perhaps my core complaint, that Glyndebourne is a different venture altogether from Bayreuth. News flash.
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