Organization

Singer

Soprano

Esther Dierkes

Rusalka

Tenor

David Junghoon Kim

Prince

Mezzo-soprano

Katia Ledoux

Jezibaba

Stage director

Bastian Kraft

Conductor

Oksana Lyniv

Costume designer

Jelena Miletić

Set designer

Peter Baur

Dramaturge

Franz-Erdmann Meyer-Herder

Chorus master

Manuel Pujol

Bass

Goran Jurić

Vodnik

Baritone

Angel Macías

The Hunter

Torsten Hofmann

The Gamekeeper

Alexandra Urquiola

The Turnspit

Catriona Smith

Second Nymph

Leia Lensing

Third Nymph

Lighting designer

Gerrit Jurda

Video designer

Sophie Lux

Natasha Wilson

First Nymph

Allison Cook

Princess

Orchestra

Mitglieder des Staatsorchesters Stuttgart

Others

Staatsopernchor der Oper Stuttgart

Staatsorchesters Stuttgart

Staatsoper Stuttgart

Czech

Stuttgart

Germany

Opernhaus

Rusalka Dvořák,A

Public

German

English

Approved

Allison Cook - Rusalka - Stuttgart

In this forest the longing for transformation pulls from both sides (with sometimes radical consequences): The mermaid Rusalka wants to become a person in order to be able to love the prince in the light of day, but has to give up shape and voice. The prince, on the other hand, to whom everything can belong in the order of the human world, must have led the search for something specific to Rusalka's mysterious pond during the night. Many versions of this story (HC Andersen, Melusine, Disney's Arielle and many more) have been interpreted through queer readings as a portrait of a life that is only possible in secret and the pain associated with it. Following this line of thinking, director Bastian Kraft depicts the hybrid forest and water creatures in Antonín Dvořák's ghostly beautiful opera Rusalka, which tells the story of parallel worlds at nightDrag and burlesque performers to the side. With their imaginative, fluid performance of gender that speaks of freedom, they counteract a world that is thoroughly obsessed with fixed role models. In Rusalka's case, however, the rifts of this otherness cannot be bridged without a voice (and without a common language of desire): a foreign princess, as the long arm of the norm, ultimately poisons the love between the prince and the incarnate mermaid. In his operatic debut, Bastian Kraft examines what a world should look like in which difference no longer means incompatibility, in an empathic examination of the permeability of boundaries and the opportunities for metamorphosis. The musical direction is in the hands of the Ukrainian star conductor Oksana Lyniv

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble