Thread by @david_m_wagner

1/ In NY: “Dad, I went to the Met and saw RUSALKA.” “How was Renée?” “Awesome!”
In Old Czechia: “Dad, I was walking by the lake and I saw a rusalka!” “Stay away from them, son, they’re dangerous!”
In Dvorak’s opera they are dangerous, but innocently so, and to themselves a/w/a to

https://twitter.com/metopera/status/1329198634026622981

2/ the men they love. And it’s a proper name. Our heroine is a sweetly-pie who sings this opera’s Act I show-stopper, the Song to the Moon, asking it to guide her to her honeybun. And indeed the Prince comes along and whisks her off to the palace.

3/ Also involved are her father the Water Gnome, clearly a charter member of Dads Against Daughters Dating, and the witch Jezibaba, remarkably like Ursula the Sea Witch, bc yes, we’ve got here a permutation of the Little Mermaid legend.

4/ At the palace, beautiful but unable to speak bc that’s what it says in the L.Mermaid chapter of The Heroine’s Handbook, Rusalka meets her nemesis - the Foreign Princess. Dvorak (wisely, I think) avoided the obvious: giving the FP a name and making her a mezzo-soprano.

5/ (We already have a mezzo lead - Jezibaba.) So the FP is a soprano, and usually one who could sing Rusalka, so I want to thank sopranos who undertake it (tho they’d pr’ly say hey, this is the opera biz, and it’s a Met gig.) Here we have two principals who’ve been w this

6/ production since it debuted: Renée Fleming as Rusalka and Dolora Zajick as Jezibaba; joined by the versatile bass John Relyea as the Water Gnome, sweet-smiling lyric tenor Piotr Beczała as the Prince, and no less than Emily Magee (credits include Elsa in LOHENGRIN at Bayreuth

7/ and Blanche in DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES @MetOpera) as the Foreign Princess.

Speaking of DIALOGUES, to which I alluded in a tweet on spiritual matters earlier today, it’s the webcast opera this Friday night, available thru Sat pm!