Wonder of wonders! Last week I saw one of the few satisfying events of what the Swedish government has designed as a multicultural year. A hundred year old fairy tale opera from Central Europe, produced absolutely straight in a moderately modern production. The choice of work and the stage production are neither ingratiating nor politically correct and far from any sell-out to pop culture or any kind of "hybride culture" project.
The NorrlandsOperan in Umeå - far from the most northern part of Sweden but possibly the European opera house nearest the Polar Circle - and the Cape Town Opera of South Africa have joined forces to present the first production in Scandinavia (and in South Africa?) of Antonín Dvorák's Rusalka from 1901, performed in Czech by six South African and four Scandinavian singers. The director and his teams are Swedes, the conductor from South Africa. The production is moderately updated, the fairy-tale's opposition of nature and civilisation, animal and human, unobtrusively and intelligently transformed into a story more about belonging or not in a class-divided society. I have not before seen a production on this level from director Staffan Aspegren. It makes you think much and feel intensely which is of course what theatre always should do. And the modernisation of the story is on no level condescending towards the original or patronising to the audience.
But the real wonder is something else: the artists, the singers. All six South Africans - two white and four black - have voices from good to exceptional, sing well and act never less than effectively. The occasional glimpse of a lack of tradition or routine makes their success even more astonishing. At least two of them are simply magnificent. One of these contributes something from another vocal tradition - without being in any way just "exotic" - so to give the words cross-cultural integration a new meaning in opera.
Otto Maidl, bass, as Rusalka's (here alcoholic) father (the Water man or Watersprite in the original) is the more "mainstream" of the two. Very moving in his great anguished outbursts, he could easily be recruited to the bass division of any good opera company. At least in this Slavonic music, his voice, more basso cantante than profondo, shows real splendour and much character. He acts well and sings with unfailingly beautiful tone even in the most dramatic passages.
Miranda Tini as Jezibaba the Witch is more astonishing, sometimes even incredible in her ways with her difficult part. A huge woman - think Norman, Arroyo and add some - she has two voices blended with unorthodox but extremely effective voice production: a lugubrious contralto of very dark colour and a somewhat uncouth dramatic mezzosoprano with biting high notes. I do not know if I would like to hear her in Mozart but definitely in Verdi. And Slavonic opera seems to fit her well. Not a conventionally well-schooled actress, the formidable Tini moves through the production with authority and attacks her part (and her partners) with immense flair. At 42 she has sung in Cape Town Opera's chorus, covered Queenie in Stage Boat and has a repertoire of about five operatic parts. This one would never believe from the absolute security with which she moves through the production and negotiates the extreme tessitura of Dvorák's music - in Czech!
It is easier to imagine Maidl than Tini in the regular opera repertoire but it would be thrilling to see any of them in other parts that would give scope to their very individual gifts. Maidl is solidly promising, Tini is so amazing that she must simply must be seen and heard to be believed...
The South Africans meet from good to outstanding partners in their Scandinavian colleagues and you sense the collective inspiration in the ensemble; it makes you once more think of NorrlandsOperan's roots in the group theatre movement of the 1970s. Everyone contributes to make the production a great music theatre experience. And, I repeat, it shows how it is possible to work in "high culture" - in this case paradoxically an opera from a third "national" music culture, rooted in the Czech cultural liberation movement of a century ago! - in a multicultural perspective without any artistic or political compromise. I would not have believed it before I saw NorrlandsOperan's and Cape Town Opera's production of Dvorak's Rusalka...
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