Rusalka by Antonín Dvorak at the Gran Teatre del Liceu

When Dvorák returned from his travels to America in 1895, he was a different man. After abandoning the symphony as a genre, he dedicated the last decade of his life to two exuberant musical forms, the symphonic poem and opera. The resulting works, extraordinarily poetic, were Dvorák's attempt to reach the heart of the Czech spirit, describing in music and theater the tales that his compatriots cherished so much.

Rusalka - a lyrical fairy-tale in three acts - premiered in Prague in 1901 and is the best-known and most beloved opera - along with Smetana's The Bartered Bride - of Czech lyric theater. Dvorák had already shown interest in Czech folklore in a group of symphonic poems inspired by the popular ballads of Karel Jaromír Erben, and resolutely adopted a libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil, focused on a water nymph or spirit, inspired by Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué's popular Undine (1811) and also Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid (1837).

A masterpiece of Romantic lyricism, it tells the story of the water nymph who takes on human nature and pays cruelly for the consequences. Rusalka falls in love with the prince who often bathes in the lake, and asks her father, the water genie, to help her become a woman. To achieve this, after the famous "Song to the Moon", she turns to the witch and assumes some human conditions, albeit limited. The prince falls in love with her at first, but her silence and apparent coldness disappoint him, leading him to soon direct his feelings towards an attractive and cruel foreign princess. Rusalka must return to her environment - no longer human or water spirit -, and is condemned to lead men to death. The prince, repentant, returns and asks her for a final kiss, even though he knows it will cost him his life, and dies happily in her arms.

Musically very beautiful, with a certain Wagnerian influence (especially the Tetralogy), it elegantly gathers traditional melodies in its ballads, songs, and dances, and expresses with choruses of nymphs and water spirits an idealized and romanticized vision of nature.

Asmik Grigorian and Piotr Beczala will be the protagonists of the performances of this new production between the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Säschsische Staatsoper in Dresden, the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, the Teatro Real, and the Palau de les Arts in Valencia. A subtle and psychological proposal signed by Christof Loy, Rusalka is a metaphor for the difficulties of communicating between two worlds. Set in the lobby of a theater, where the protagonist is paralyzed and plays tricks, she is surrounded by characters who live on their memories and want to leave to discover other ways of understanding reality.

A concept that provides a strong framework for the interactions between the protagonists of this wonderful story where hidden desires and darkest instincts become visible.