Dvořák: Rusalka / Alan Gilbert

Main role with and without a voice

A water sprite, wildly in love and with an exceptional talent for singing, wants to become human, and pays the price by forsaking her beautiful voice. But the human prince she idolises is unfaithful, which brings about his death and sends the water sprite back to the spirit world. At least this means that she gets her voice back and can bring the piece to an end with enchanting singing, though she does not regain her peace of mind… Thus, in a nutshell, the story of Antonín Dvořák’s best-known and probably best opera, »Rusalka«, which was first performed in 1901. The »lyrical fairy tale« about the doomed love of a supernatural water creature for a human has rung in the ears of hundreds of thousands of opera fans around the world ever since – albeit generally not the whole work, but in the shape of a single extract: Rusalka’s »Lied an den Mond« (Song to the Moon) is one of the top hits in the aria repertoire.