Dvořák - Rusalka (Dublin, 2026)

Antonín Dvořák - Rusalka

Irish National Opera, 2026

Fergus Sheil, Netia Jones, Jennifer Davis, Ryan Capozzo, Ante Jerkunica, Michelle DeYoung, Giselle Allen, Rachel Croash, Sarah Richmond, Alexandra Urquiola, Benjamin Russell, Andrew Masterson, 

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin - 22nd March 2026

I guess it's probably expected that commentators on opera should have something to say about Timothée Chalamet's views on the value and relevance of opera and ballet today, but I don't think anyone who has actually been to see an opera needs to be convinced that it is far from a dead art form, and probably in far better shape than the movie industry at the moment, certainly in terms of artistic standards and growing audiences. Every new production of an opera - even one that is centuries old - brings out something new, touches on modern day concerns, adds to our understanding of what it means to be human, have feelings and relate to the world around us. And when you have a creative team like Fergus Sheil and Netia Jones working on a production like the Irish National Opera's Rusalka... well, the mind truly is expanded.

All fairy-tales tend to have a moral or present a cautionary tale that touches on deep universal themes and Rusalka's are not difficult to identify, although it's a story that has taken on many different forms over the years in various European guises such as Undine, Melusine, Oceane and The Little Mermaid. Not only does each version or adaptation have its own take on the subject, the universality of the theme is one that each person can relate to from their own experience. As an opera Dvořák's Rusalka is perhaps richer than most, the musical score inviting many ways to interpret its meaning and draw out new ideas. Not all of them need to be as ambitiously transgressive as Martin Kušej's 2010 Bavarian State Opera production or Stefan Herheim's at La Monnaie in 2012, but this particular opera seems to invite imaginative and engaging responses in its productions.

We certainly get that in the extraordinary visual feast created by Netia Jones for the Irish National Opera's 2026 production. Jones might not have any unusual or original take on the subject - opinions will differ on that obviously depending on what expectations you bring with you to the theatre - but instead finds another way to approach and draw out the themes, seeking to make them less magically 'fairy-tale' and more rooted in reality. Being rooted in reality doesn't mean that it has to adhere to naturalistic imagery or a straightforward narrative line either, but rather she presents it in abstract terms that connect with the work's underlying sentiments. The INO production is definitely very much in the abstract and yet it does invite engagement, although there were certainly those around me in the audience who seemed to be less willing to engage with those ideas.

Despite the extravagant sets, creative lighting and stunning projection effects that I've seen Jones produce before (Philip Glass's Orphée and Brian Irvine's Least Like the Other), the INO production bases the story in simple but more familiar recognisable locations that reflect the underlying purpose of the work, if not exactly in any naturalistic fashion. Rusalka is less about being a mermaid who wants to become human than in essence being a coming-of-age story. The first scene in Act I then envisions the water nymphs as children in school uniforms, the watery element suggested by a stage-spanning network of pipes that they wrap themselves around like in a playground, monitored by the plumber/janitor Vodník. He's not so much a sinister water goblin than a man who speaks with the wisdom of age and the experience of disappointment, warning the girls not to dream of growing up too soon.

Rusalka of course refuses to listen and Jones chooses to depict her transformation through the witch Ježibaba as a surgeon employing plastic surgery so that Rusalka can fit into the glamour of the 'grown up' world that she is enchanted by (Vodník taking every opportunity to tell us and Rusalka that we should have listened to his warning). In one of the many extravagant scenes in the production (just to mention in passing the remarkable visuals of the moon in eclipse for the 'Song to the Moon' in Act I, the 3D-like projections for the scene in the forest and the impressive kitchen - all of them suitably scaled-up for the beauty and glamour of the world seen through the eyes of Rusalka), the dances that take place on a chess board reflect the young woman's inability to comprehend the sophisticated social interactions and moves that the Prince, the Foreign Princess and the other guests are able to navigate and control more easily. It's made perfectly clear that Rusalka is not ready for and does not belong to this world.

Aside from presenting jaw-dropping visuals - Netia Jones acting as director, set & costume designer and even the creation of the superb video projections - the production succeeds in establishing the right mood for each scene, allowing the drama and characters to play out within that without introducing any extraneous elements or eccentric touches. It places you within a magical world - it places you in Dvořák's magical musical world - enthralled, not feeling the need to seek to interpret what the director is trying to tell you. If you are familiar with the tale and wish to do so, you can carry over thoughts, impressions and ideas from other productions, each revealing a new facet, or you can relate it to your own impressions and experience. There is certainly the possibility of seeing the opera not only reflecting Rusalka's loss of innocence, but also the rapidly changing modern world itself being a great deal more complicated for a young person to navigate.

Essentially that's at the heart of what the work is about, or at least one main theme, and that's what came across here. It's perhaps most pointedly made in the 'plastic surgery' scene, showing Rusalka rejecting the purity of her nature and the purity of nature, for an artificial and superficial glamour world that doesn't make any sense or offer any true value. It's even reflected in the character of the Prince, who is too often presented in a superficial way, the lure by which Rusalka is drawn away from her true self and finds the truth of human nature in deceit and betrayal. In this production - perhaps something to do with the singing of Ryan Capozzo, perhaps the nostalgic tug of the score under Fergus Sheil - the prince has a more human role to play; a counterpart to Rusalka's desire to leave behind her childhood, his desire for Rusalka is an attraction to and longing for the beauty of pure innocence, but a stark warning that once lost it is impossible to regain.

The singing performances are of course key to keeping you engaged with what each of the characters are living through, and with Jennifer Davis you are with Rusalka unwaveringly all the way. The opera was sung impressively in the original Czech which is very much a part of the character and tone of the work (Davis becoming something of an Irish Dvořák specialist having sung in Armida in Wexford in 2022), but the direction plays an equally important part in the human expression of the characters. Both aspects were managed brilliantly not just by Davis but, as indicated above, allowing Ryan Capozzo to let you see another side to the Prince. Giselle Allen even lets you sympathise to an extent with the Foreign Princess - again too often merely a cipher - or at least understand where she is coming from. Sure, she has a mercenary side - a necessary survival quality in this grown-up world, but she shows some self-respect in having little time for the Prince and his equivocations - get with the programme or go to hell, she literally tells him. Likewise, the excellent Ante Jerkunica overcame the rather repetitive admonitions of Vodník to add meaning and poignancy to each utterance as the inevitability of the tragedy unfolded.

Just as vital to keeping you engaged rather than puzzled is the musical interpretation under Fergus Sheil. Rusalka has the potential to be a little bombastic if its romantic sweeps are not handled with delicacy. No mean feat reining in an orchestra of this scale, but Sheil is right at home here with his ability to marshal the vast orchestral forces for this work and gets all the moods, pace and dynamic right for this production. It's gushily romantic in places, robustly Wagnerian in others, sensitive and moody where it needs to be, hitting those punchy crescendos in the right places, working with the delivery of the singers and the visuals to achieve maximum impact. When you have such beautiful music to 'illustrate' those deep emotions, feelings and experiences, it's impossible not to be swept along. I'm sure even Timothée would have been impressed.

External links: Irish National Opera

Gounod - Faust (Dublin, 2023)

Charles Gounod - Faust

Irish National Opera, 2023

Elaine Kelly, Jack Furness, Duke Kim, Nick Dunning, Nicholas Brownlee, Jennifer Davis, Gyula Nagy, Mark Nathan, Gemma Ní Bhriain, Colette McGahon

Gaiety Theatre, Dublin - 1st October 2023

Goethe's Faust brings up some essential and always relevant big questions about the nature of humanity and the meaning of life. The quest for knowledge, love versus lust, science versus religion, war and peace, forgiveness versus revenge, all are considered, as well as the consequences to our actions. Gounod's Faust takes up all these into his opera but seems to have little serious consideration or point to make about any of them and instead focusses almost exclusively on the tragic love story at the centre, and using the rest of the material as colour for some admittedly fantastic dramatic set pieces and thrilling music. That can be enough but it doesn't have to be, and an adventurous production can bring all these elements together into something more coherent and thoughtful. Jack Furness's production for the Irish National Opera at best pays lip-service to some of the bigger questions, but it is ultimately more successful in serving those set pieces with strong musical and singing performances.

The INO Faust at least has a very distinctive look and feel and Furness succeeds in putting the drama across very much in its own way, with little of the obvious traditional period settings. It seems to be set against the beginning of the Great War in the costumes and period detail, but not strictly so, which is enough to give this plenty of mood and menace for the work of the devil to be unleashed. Right from the start it makes its mark, finding a unique way of presenting the tricky transformation scene of Faust from an old man - who nonetheless has a soaring tenor voice - into a younger man followed his renouncement of his studies and his soul along with it, and gives it all up to Mephistopheles in exchange for reliving a life filled with true possibilities. The tenor, Duke Kim, appears as a younger shadow version of an actor playing the aged scientist (Nick Dunning), who is eventually freed from the shackles of his old age.

This works well enough without any real distraction, the older Faust reappearing only now and again as if to remind him of the fate that still awaits him. There is a similar adventurous approach to several of the other key scenes, the simple adaptable set designs moving into place to set mood and background more than serving strictly as literal locations. This allows things to similarly move fluidly with all the quality of a nightmarish flow of time and place, all under the control of Mephistopheles. Mainly there are three large chimneys that look like setting the scene of a dark industry of people working in factories. These turn into ovens that are used in the manufacture of armaments for the war that Valentin is off to fight in with his comrades, the largest one eventually revolving downward to present a huge cannon.

The nature of war is a constant theme throughout, the evidence of Mephistopheles at large in the world or perhaps the misadventures of men of science having consequences far beyond the actions of one man, Faust. The contrasts and ambiguities of war are also reflected in the imagery, with a huge cross made of a rocket bomb and crossed rifles in the church scene where Marguerite is condemned, and there are retina-searing explosive incidents elsewhere. You can't deny that the production makes the necessary impact on such scenes, not least in the arrival of Mephistopheles rising up in a blinding red light from beneath the stage, but right through the Act II drinking song and waltz, the Jewel Song, the soldier's chorus, and the hallucinatory Walpurgis night scene. The production looks great and is particularly well-choreographed in those crowd and choral scenes.

But somehow, as a whole, it never seems to amount to a great deal, and ultimately Gounod's focus on Faust's chase, treatment and abandonment of Marguerite which makes up the bulk of the dramatic thread that ties up the work, overshadows any attempt to draw deeper meaning or resonance out of the subject. It doesn't have to be like that and many productions have striven to overcome the dramatic limitations of the opera (Frank Castorf, Vienna 2021 - being one of the most recent and extreme), but Jack Furness doesn't really push those ideas anywhere interesting. The focus appears to be just to ensure that full justice is done to Gounod's music and there at least there is much to enjoy in the performance at the opening performance at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin.

The orchestra was very capably handled by Elaine Kelly, capturing the melodic invention of Gounod's score and its dramatic setting. It was the singing however that really stood out here. Arguably, this is an opera made for showing off great singers and the performances here were simply outstanding. South Korean tenor Duke Kim's Faust soared, delivering one of the best performances I've seen in the role, playing off a fine Mephistopheles from Nicholas Brownlee and Jennifer Davis's sympathetic Marguerite. Gyula Nagy was an impressive Valentin, delivering a terrific "Ecoute-moi bien Marguerite" dire warning to his sister. There were no weaknesses anywhere here, with Mark Nathan as Wagner, Gemma Ní Bhriain as Siébel and Colette McGahon rounding out a great cast. You couldn't fail to entertain an audience with that, which - more than trying to draw anything deeper out of Faust - was clearly the intention and successfully achieved.

External Links: Irish National Opera

Dvořák - Armida (Wexford, 2022)

Antonín Dvořák - Armida

Wexford Festival Opera, 2022

Norbert Baxa, Hartmut Schörghofer, Jozef Benci, Jennifer Davis, Stanislav Kuflyuk, Jan Hynk, Rory Dunne, Gerard Schneider, Josef Moravec, Thomas Birch, Andrii Kharlamov, Libuse Santorisova, Chris Mosz, Josef Kovačič

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 2nd November 2022

Harking back to the standard 19th century operatic tensions involving war and love, based on Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata during the time of the crusades, you would think that it shouldn't be too difficult to make a version of Armida exciting and dramatic. Dvořák's dynamic music in his final opera certainly lives up to the drama, expressing high passions of love and betrayal where the stakes are high between the opposing forces of Christian and Saracen armies. Add in some magic, sorcery and an Act II finale that includes a swooping dragon to stage a dramatic escape at a critical point and this seems tailor-made for the 71st Wexford Festival Opera's Magic & Music theme. And yet, something is lacking in this production.

It's definitely not Dvořák's music. There is no fake Eastern exoticism here, there are no romantic light arias; it's straight ahead drama and high passion on a war footing. Ismen, ruler of Syria and sorcerer, is however under no illusions as to the limits of his powers to make Princess Armida love him. He knows she loves another, but he and King Hidraot, the father of Armida, believe that she is better placed to infiltrate the enemy camp and use her magic powers against the mighty forces that have already gathered to take the city of Jerusalem. Armida however has other ideas having been bewitched herself by the appearance of the knight Rinald out hunting. There is powerful vocal writing to match these emotions, not least of which is the inexplicable passion that grips Armida and leads her to side with the enemy.

And yet, much of what passes for drama in the first two acts feels detached from the characters and more like symphonic colouring and scene setting as characters define their position and plan their course of action. Director Hartmut Schörghofer doesn't have any great ideas to make it visually more engaging as a human drama, keeping it in a First Crusade (1096 - 1099) setting, using the backdrops for projections of locations with the principals and choruses filling a mainly bare stage, often singing outward. Norbert Baxa's rousing conducting makes this sound terrific and the singing is outstanding, and that proves to be more than enough for a satisfactory presentation of this rarely performed work, but you are left feeling that it could do with a little more action or activity. And contemporary relevance, possibly.

There really isn't much to help the audience engage with the predicament at hand, the festival theme of Magic & Music taken a little too literally here and not enough attention given to the human side, or to the reality and scale of the war being played out. You can hear it ok, not least in the fine singing of Jennifer Davis as Armida and Stanislav Kuflyuk as Ismen, and the impressive choral work certainly suggests the might of the Christian forces on one side and the women of the court of King Hidraot on the other. The set relies on a mirrored background cutting the stage diagonally to visualise the divisions, with screens that open up and supply depth on one side, and computer generated projections of the army camp on the other. A huge dragon on the screen swoops down and explosions of magic do a little to match the content, but it still feels distanced and stage operatic.

You might expect the opera to pick up after this pre-interval magical intervention by Ismen, but the sorcerer for some reason leaves Armida and Rinald to wander and wonder in an enchanted garden in the third act. It doesn't really work musically or dramatically in any sense of taking the opera forward - feeling more like an operatic convention to have a romantic interlude - and here the director also fails to find a way of making this engaging or even capitalise on the visual splendour and magic that such a scene offers. Projected computer graphics are used and, like the movies when they are overused (Avatar came to mind in this scene), it lacks a sense of real substance, a sense of reality. Perhaps if you are seated lower and at a better angle it might have looked more enveloping (the accompanying images seem to testify to that), but from the left of the stage and above, the mirrored effect wasn't visible.

The final act should bring about action and passion, and musically it really did. Down in the orchestra pit Baxa and the Wexford Festival orchestra delivered the rolling punches, the fearsome chorus of Crusaders - superbly managed by Andrew Synnott - even though only a representative handful, completely gave the impression they could overrun Jerusalem themselves. The principal singers raised their game also, striking blow after blow. Partly however because there was little conviction behind the buildup of the previous acts to merit it - in the dramatic content of the opera as much as in the stage direction - it still appeared to fall short of what was needed to make this opera work.

Still, any opportunity to see a rare Dvořák opera performed live is an occasion to relish, and although it is imperfect in conception and with the death of composer in 1904 there was no opportunity for revision, it didn't disappoint in a fully orchestrated live performance. The timing was a little bit off between orchestra and chorus in the opening scenes, but there were no issues elsewhere. I was concerned that conductor might be a little heavy-handed and sacrifice melody for overstatement, but it was wholly appropriate for a staged version of Armida, attempting to make those high emotions, passions, conflict and heightened magical content all blend with the intent of the drama, and it sounded terrific in the O'Reilly Theatre of the National Opera House.

The performance certainly revealed some excellent singing. Looking like she hadn't been given a great deal of direction, Armida spent much of it almost looking like she was in a state of trance, but Jennifer Davis sung out those passions impressively. Ismen is a choice role, a rather more interesting figure than Rinald, and it was taken superbly by Stanislav Kuflyuk. Gerard Schneider did what he could with Rinald, but the character is not greatly defined in either the music or the direction. As already noted, but it's worth saying again, the male and female choruses were outstanding, giving the work that extra edge of lyricism and dramatic dynamic where needed.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera

Sokolović - Svadba (Aix-en-Provence, 2015 - Webcast)

Ana Sokolović - Svadba

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2015

Dáirine Ní Mheadhra, Ted Huffman, Zack Winokur, Florie Valiquette, Liesbeth Devos, Jennifer Davis, Pauline Sikirdji, Andrea Ludwig, Mireille Lebel

Culturebox - 10 July 2015

Opera has always been and should always be open to broadening its definition and its remit in line with the times. Even those traditional core components of music and narrative should be capable of being stretched to accommodate new forms of expression through musical drama. There's at least one area that has been under represented and is surely capable of taking opera in new directions in modern composition, and that's in the field of women composers. The Canadian-Serbian composer Ana Sokolović certainly finds a distinct individual approach to opera in Svadba, but I'm not convinced that the subject - a woman's preparations for a wedding - really gains anything from being in the opera medium.

Women composers are rare enough in opera and classical music composition, so it's interesting that the only other female opera composer who I've covered on OperaJournal so far, Aleksandra Vrebalov, is also Serbian born. It's interesting too to compare the subject matter of Vrebalov's Mileva with that of Svadba, both of them rooted in the plight and the nature of women of Serbian background. Mileva is a portrait opera of Mileva Marić, who was married to Albert Einstein, but received little recognition for her own scientific research. Svadba means 'Wedding', and marriage of a young Serbian woman, Milica, is the whole subject of Sokolović's short one-act opera, performed here at the Aix-en-Provence festival.

It's perhaps not so much the subject that is the problem with both works, as much as the failure of the libretto to live up to the ambitions of the operatic medium. Ana Sokolović certainly makes her own mark in the subject and treatment of Svadba. Most notably it uses no musical instruments whatsoever, and yet it is still thoroughly musical. The entire one-hour opera consists of six women singing and interacting together a cappella. And it's not just words, but slaps, sounds, chants and stamps connected in through dance and movement to build up a wonderful musical rhythm. It's a bit Steve Reich and a bit Stomp. In terms of narrative, unfortunately, it's mostly Stomp.

There are unquestionably other levels you can draw from the rather simple outline narrative description of Svadba. You can see that it has roots in folk, that there is the whole idea of wedding as tradition, and that there is a particular bond that exists between women preparing for a wedding - and some tensions too. I'm not convinced however that Svadba puts these matters across any better in an opera than could be done in a film. And I don't just mean 'Muriel's Wedding', 'Mamma Mia' or 'Bridesmaids'. There's clearly an attempt to get beneath the surface and into the deeper subconscious nature of how women feel and behave in such an occasion that places Svadba closer to 'Céline and Julie go Boating'. In any case, it's got nothing in common with The Marriage of Figaro. But then there's no reason why a 21st century opera should have anything in common with an 18th century opera.

It would help if the libretto did support something as ambitious as the a cappella arrangements. The flow and rhythms of the night before the wedding narrative all culminate evidently in the moment of the wedding, and Milica's solo singing of her wedding morning reflections "Light breeze, breathe softly..." is beautiful, bringing all the moods together into this one big moment. Unfortunately, the words and imagery of the libretto let it down somewhat with unsubtle horticultural metaphors like "Come to me my beloved / Come into my verdant garden / where my red rose is blooming", and Milica's separation from her family makes her feel like a "grape cut from the vine".

Svadba is really about is whatever you want to see in it, and in that respect, it matches how opera is staged in the present day. Concepts and real human issues can be drawn out of it if you are willing to apply your own experience to it. Identifying with Milica, you can feel part of a long line of tradition, you can experience the feelings of loss that marriage brings ("I'm my mother's only daughter"), feel the thrill of the unknown that comes with a man (better a heroic husband like Ilija than a drunkard like Jovan), running a whole range of emotions from fear and excitement to the sense of setting out alone, being reborn in white in a wedding dress. Or you could see it as a lot of irritating characters prancing around chanting nonsense syllables with pantomime overacting ...oh, so it is like 'Céline and Julie go Boating' then.

Links: ARTE Concert, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence