Rusalka review

David Butt Philip partners her as the smitten Prince, his ideally clear, clean tone eloquently deployed throughout the opera’s substantial course. Grand and dignified in his recurrent and sadly all-too-prescient predictions of general doom, Rafał Siwek impresses as Rusalka’s water-spirit father. Sarah Connolly makes a properly scary Ježibaba (meaning witch in Czech) – playing her as a good deal more malign than the "wise, eternal spirit" mentioned in the cast list might suggest. Meanwhile, the character usually referred to as the Foreign Princess has been changed to "Duchess, the prince’s political equal". Emma Bell’s hard-hearted portrayal is delivered with glamorous, fully empowered vocalism. Fitting neatly into the overall scheme are Hongni Wu as a cook in the Prince’s palace and Ross Ramgobin, who misses no tricks as the Gamekeeper.

The names of the characters listed in the programme, incidentally, are different from the last time around. In this Czech-language folk opera, there are no named characters – even Rusalka is merely a generic term for a water spirit – so it seems a touch obscure for the Royal Opera now to refer to the character previously known as the Gamekeeper as Hajný and the former Kitchen Boy as Kuchtík.

Supervising the music is conductor Semyon Bychkov, widely experienced in this repertoire. Together with the orchestra, his detailed and emotionally intense approach to Dvořák’s heady score injects some authentic dark fairytale magic.