Original subtitles

"The cast of this "Rusalka" is a stroke" of good fortune such as you rarely find.

High musical standards are combined with acting abilities

you don't often see in the opera house,

and this is true of all the performers onstage.

As a result, we can delve much more deeply than usual

"when you're often forced to decide;" singing imposes certain conditions

and singing needs certain people for whom acting may not come naturally.

But Kristine Opolais acts like Nicole Kidman - and that's rare.

When I'm working I really don't draw any distinction

between actors and singers.

The difference, of course, is the music.

Music is a kind of emotional putty

for the audience and for the singers onstage.

It goes into every crack and holds the whole thing together.

You don't get that in the spoken theatre where the rehearsals serve above all

to produce this emotionality.

We've got only our bodies and language: we don't have a medium like music.

Music automatically plumbs the listener's unconscious and affects us there.

We first have to produce this by means of rhythm , pauses,

arrangements, images and so on.

In spite of this, I begin by approaching the story as a whole.

I then make a joke about it by persuading singers

who tend to be poorly trained as actors

to dig deep inside themselves

and produce fantastic performances as actors.

I've rarely had such a homogeneous and "powerful ensemble as with this "Rusalka"."

All the performers involved deserve their accolade as actors.

It's hard to categorize between a stage director and an opera director.

The old cliché of an opera director is of someone

who creates splendid installations and then places the singers in positions

where they can sing their arias beautifully.

In comparison, he naturally directs people differently.

There have been times when we were really tested.

It was a kind of mental multitasking between singing, movement and expression -

there were a lot of demanding situations.

But I understood - and one often doesn't understand this -

why rehearsals last five or six weeks.

In this particular case not a day was too much.

Every minute was used efficiently and meaningfully.

Martin Kušej is a director who takes a close interest in the music,

and I think that's a very good thing and very important.

For him the music isn't something one would rather do without.

What's also important for me is the director/conductor relationship.

This is invariably neglected by opera companies.

Conflicts often arise because of a lack of preparation.

Here both knew from the outset what they were letting themselves in for.

They worked together in a very cooperative and helpful way.

Another plus: the conductor Tomáš Hanus was present at all the rehearsals.

He attended every rehearsal and that's how you achieve these results.

I was conducting this opera for the first time here in Munich.

You need outstanding singers and an outstanding orchestra.

It's an extremely difficult opera to sing.

If I may say so, Dvorak was quite ruthless with his singers.

Czech is a very complicated language

but also a very musical language,

and so a Czech native is ideal as a conductor.

The singers worked intensively on the language.

I wanted them to do so and I told them as much.

If you pronounce the Czech language correctly when singing,

this helps the music.

It sounds more natural and more musical

if stress and length are correct. Rhythm is the lifeblood of the word.

We worked hard , and I think

the singers achieved a very high standard of spoken Czech.

Czech was actually sung rather than just being hinted at.

Initially, when you look at the score

and see all these Czech consonants together, so dry,

you think it's impossible to sing.

But I had a good répétiteur who's very familiar with Czech,

and it was then amazingly easy to get it past my lips or throat.

I'm now enjoying the vocal challenge.

One can really sing a beautiful legato in spite of three consecutive consonants.

When I first set eyes on the text and tried to read it

I thought I'd never be able to speak it, let alone sing it.

Of course it requires a bit more effort

than your native language and even other languages.

The many consonantal clusters make you think

that it's practically unpronounceable.

Somehow it all came very easily with all these consonants

and everything else that's in this language.

" I'd describe "Rusalka" first" and foremost as a fairy tale.

The family is really my story about it.

I don't think Dvorak ever thought

it could be interpreted in this way.

It's about shedding light on the human psyche, about its unfathomable depths

and also of course the profound desire for love,

also, I believe, the desire for an ideal , a Utopia,

but of course this promise is never really kept.

There's this man who leads a double life,

and - a classic case - there's this woman, a mother figure,

who very surprisingly is repeatedly characterized by the fact that

at least subjectively she claims not to know what's happening.

Ježibaba and the Water Goblin are already present during the Overture.

We wanted to show that these characters too are in a co-dependent relationship

and that in some way or other Ježibaba too is abused by him.

This sense of being a victim , which she already feels in the Overture,

this fear, which I hope to show, this despair...

Her feelings change in the course of the piece

so that Ježibaba, previously the victim , becomes actively guilty in Act I I I.

In this piece the Witch Ježibaba is my wife, as it were.

Only at the beginning is any light shed on our relationship

when we're onstage together.

It's a marriage where nothing works any longer,

we've lived together for decades and drifted completely apart.

Each seeks refuge in his or her own world.

She turns to drink and mumbo-jumbo.

With me a process of total brutalization has taken place.

I have my secret passion in the basement.

I perform magic for this girl whom we keep quiet by telling her stories.

My husband pretends to be a water goblin and tells her stories,

and sometimes I've played the part of this witch for the children in the basement.

So Rusalka is even more surprised when she sees me as a witch.

I think I was always this man's back-up plan:

There's still Ježibaba.

My disguise as a witch

is all part of the game we put on for these children.

With this magic I want to stir her imagination and send her away.

I want to get her away from the place where she's been.

She asks too many questions and becomes awkward. She simply has to go.

This is all dressed up in a bit of esoteric hocus-pocus

to get rid of her as quickly and efficiently as possible.

This is all a kind of second layer placed over the opera

and so we had to throw light on it and take account of it to the very end.

You can do it in this way but you don't have to.

But it was fantastic to work with the singers.

From the outset they took the concept very seriously and fully understood it.

They wanted to do it this way, and I found it a wonderful process.

From the very beginning I was completely taken by this idea.

It makes sense to provide a topical context for this fairy tale.

And it's not just a fantastic idea,

its realization is also hugely successful , with no weaknesses.

Dramaturgically speaking, the work has become a thriller,

so you really have to brace yourself as a member of the audience.

If you interpret the concept of a fairy tale as a world of appearances,

as an impossible but ideal state or an ontological state of the world ,

this works in this piece only because there are two worlds.

There's a harsh, realistic world and there's a world of appearances

created for the young women and derived from the fairy-tale world.

Children are naturally receptive to such unreal , unnatural worlds,

especially if they're traumatized . They need a framework, an environment

they can cling to and in which they can explain things.

So we made this initial assumption:

the Water Goblin, who wants to play a positive role in this story,

tells the children from the outset that they're very special :

they're chosen creatures like nixies, elves or mermaids.

In this way an entire universe arises within another universe.

For me, this was the only way I could tell this story.

Our first meeting was in fact when we discussed this concept.

I was initially a little shocked by this concept.

I naturally find the theme upsetting.

I really didn't know if we should do this

and introduce this theme into this fairy-tale world.

Aren't we giving a platform to these criminals?

Can we ever really know what a victim is feeling?

Aren't we victimizing the victims all over again

by recreating these events on the operatic stage?

And aren't we just following in the wake of the gutter press?

This exercised me a great deal.

I didn't know what Martin had in mind.

But it was clear to me that he'd make something out of this fairy tale,

"a "psychological thriller"," which lies beneath the surface.

When he explained to us what he had in mind , I was surprised

at how quickly we all understood how well it would work.

There was a further surprise in store

when the surtitles arrived towards the end of the rehearsals.

It became clear how well the text allows a second and third level of meaning

to emerge on top of the action. It was almost uncanny

to see how well this text went together with what we were doing onstage.

It was like a hand grabbing you by the throat.

Horror is the wrong word.

We were enthralled , gripped.

I basically love playing nasty types.

It's a kind of catharsis, getting rid of negative energy

in a healthy, channel led form that doesn't harm anyone.

This role is very different, of course, from Hunding or Fafner

or the usual thugs and murderers, for all their psychological depth.

There were particular difficulties here.

In the opening scene, this pawing and touching of the children

initially caused me some trouble.

But Martin helped me overcome my inhibitions

in a very natural form.

Natural form sounds stupid

as it's of course something deviant, however you look at it.

But he helped me overcome this inhibition onstage.

And after about a week, however stupid it may sound ,

it really was great fun playing this role and identifying so completely with it.

And I think that in the final analysis it has really worked.

I'd never thought I could be so unappetizing.

I don't think Martin Kušej has reinterpreted anything at all.

Kušej is a director who seeks deeply.

As in a mine, he explores the depths of the piece

and lays things bare that aren't visible at first sight.

"A fairy tale like "Rusalka"" is a veritable treasure trove, of course.

It's also this that frightens many people

when they see how radical and how true these fairy tales can be.

If you read other fairy tales closely, "like "The Frog Prince" or "Snow White","

you'll discover something similar - that's why these fairy tales were written.

We know from the child's psyche, the traumatized child's psyche,

that these fairy tales also have this function with children.

Kušej has merely laid bare "what's already in "Rusalka"."

I've worked with him a lot, and this is really his great strength.

He looks for the hidden depths, the contradictions.

He also looks for the complexity. He isn't interested in harmony.

The set designer and I didn't want a dull reflection of real life,

either in the sets onstage or in the narrative.

My aim isn't to criticize any perverse pederasts.

That's just common sense: you don't need to stress that specially.

But I'm excited by the poetic component that throws light on man's hidden depths

and which reveals a few facets that are by no means evil

or, rather, they involve more sadness and longing than mere evil.

And this hierarchy, this kind of foreground and background ,

appearance and reality, this upper world and this lower world ,

all of this played a very important role in the sets.

As for the skinning of the doe, there were insane discussions here in Munich.

This skinning is of course also a part of the set:

we're showing what lies beneath and behind.

I'm convinced the doe was simply the pretext for a reaction

that really affects this society and strikes at its very heart.

It's interesting that we've been showing a piece about child abuse

and the whole discussion has been about a stupid doe onstage.

On the one hand , this story about the doe was interesting

because it shows in the best and most pointed way how the theatre operates.

It's a very great and powerful point for the theatre to make.

We live in a world in which millions of animals are slaughtered every day.

They're eaten, consumed and thrown away.

We've turned a blind eye to this in our society.

We go to a delicatessen and see

if we'd prefer this cut of venison or this lamb for our Christmas roast.

Suddenly an animal appears onstage and people are frightened to death.

Why? Because they're confronted by something they suppress in real life.

It's the same with sexuality, erotic attraction and violence.

This is the function of the stage, and that's how it must be.

When I work with Kušej I know there'll be blood.

Working with him is very demanding but also very inspiring.

When I look at what I've achieved since working in this profession

the only work of any real relevance has been achieved with Martin Kušej.

This scene with the extras where they're all dressed as brides...

It's one of Rusalka's nightmares.

She's attending the Prince's party and soon afterwards she appears as a bride.

We initially wondered about

using only women in this scene or dressing men as women.

At some point it struck us as a very interesting mixture

to have these men with beards come on wearing bridal dresses -

there's something insanely disturbing about it.

Do our eyes deceive us? What is it? What's coming towards me?

This doe recurs throughout the piece and throughout the libretto.

The Prince describes Rusalka as a doe, and there's also a hunt.

The doe then appears again in manifold forms.

This mixture of blood and bridal dress produced a nightmarish image.

This gave rise to a very interesting tension

with this balanced music, this waltz.

What's so tragic about this production

is that Rusalka's real failure comes about in our own human world.

Of course, it's a consequence of her failure to integrate with society.

But the story becomes terrible when she enters the world of human beings.

Down there she's guarded and protected as a child.

True, she's abused , and that's altogether appalling.

But she knows nothing else, and until she discovers the desire

to see the Prince or to be among people

she seems to get along quite well with this identity of hers.

Rusalka tries to return to the world she's fled from.

She realizes the world out there is far worse than she'd expected.

She'd prefer to return to the terrible world

where at least she had a kind of identity.

The water wasn't a problem for me because I knew about it from the outset.

I could take account of it.

I knew I'd need material that was water-resistant.

We tried to keep the singers as dry as possible.

If you know something in advance, it's not a problem.

It's hard for an opera singer to be in water and sing:

the voice, after all , is easily affected as an organ.

But there was no problem with Kristine Opolais.

Martin Zehetgruber is a colleague I value highly.

For me as a costume designer his spaces are always a challenge

because the stage and the sets are always so reasonable and right.

If you put costumes onstage that don't look right,

"it screams: "Error! Error! Error! ""

"With the costumes for "Rusalka"" it was important for me to ensure

that, although there are two worlds,

it remains Rusalka's world.

This second world is the world of Rusalka's imagination,

in other words, her fears, including this traumatic image of the brides.

There's a second level , but it still has to remain a self-contained world.

I actually have two great duet scenes with Rusalka.

But in these duets she doesn't sing but remains silent.

As a result these duets really become arias.

That's already something special.

Here I'm fortunate in having Kristine Opolais opposite me.

She acts so intensely and stares at you with such big eyes

that you get enough feedback to react to something.

Normally you react to what has been sung - that's what produces the expression.

She has to produce all this without using her voice, and she does this really well.

Of course this also helps her partner to find colours in his own voice,

to react to things and in spite of everything to act with his partner.

It was great fun.

At all events Rusalka fails.

This really can't be explained even in terms of the opera.

It's a rather unsophisticated libretto

with a very idealistic and conciliatory ending.

I myself really can't make much sense of it.

So I'd rather ask questions of real life, and real life shows us

that people who've endured something like this are marked for life.