Admin

Staatsoper Hannover

Orchestra

Niedersächsisches Staatsorchester Hannover

Dirigent

Masaru Kumakura

Regisseur

Tatjana Gürbaca

Set designer

Set designer (+2)

Klaus Grünberg

Licht ontwerper

Assistent decorontwerper

Set designer (+1)

Anne Kuhn

Kostuum ontwerper

Kostuum ontwerper (+1)

Barbara Drosihn

Koor meester

Koor meester (+1)

Lorenzo Da Rio

Dramaturg

Sophia Gustorff

Sopraan (+1)

Kiandra Howarth

Rusalka

Tenor (+1)

Gerard Schneider

Princ

Bas (+3)

Shavleg Armasi

Vodník

Mezzosopraan (+4)

Katrin Wundsam

Cizí kněžna

Mezzosopraan (+3)

Monika Walerowicz

Ježibaba

Luisa Mordel

První žínka

Freya Müller

Třetí žínka

Bariton (+2)

Luvuyo Mbundu

Hajný

Opernhaus

Chorus

Chor der Staatsoper Hannover

Mezzosopraan (+1)

Beatriz Miranda

Druhá žínka

Nina van Essen

Kuchtík

Lluís Calvet i Pey

Lovec

Bariton (+3)

Eduardo Martinez

The archaic motif of Melusines, Undines, mermaids and water nymphs who present a contrast to the “real” world of humans exists in many different cultures: two worlds that make each other suffer but that are also attracted to the otherness of their counterpart.

Rusalka has fallen madly in love with a human. She is ready to pay a high price if it means that she can leave her familiar waters behind and enter the strange sphere of human beings. To exchange her fishtail for two legs she will have to agree to lose her voice. Thus her love for the human prince has become literally unspeakable – and therefore doomed to fail because a shared communication has become impossible. Rusalka herself is unable to understand this strange world with all its peculiar rules, and she cannot make herself understood either, which inevitably renders her an outsider. When she returns to her family, disappointed and unredeemed, love’s destructive forces, which crush entire worlds and plunge them into oblivion, have already been unleashed.

Antonín Dvořák’s opera is a lyrical tale about how the sensitive individual is dashed against an accelerated and efficient world whose rules and regulations it is unfamiliar with. Songlike moments, mainly allotted to the denizens of the water world, alternate with aria passages whose form frames the more conventional human characters. The colouring of Slavic-Bohemian folk music can be heard just like the characterisation of protagonists through leitmotifs. Director Tatjana Gürbaca works at Europe’s major opera houses and is celebrated for the psychological precision and narrative power of her productions. She was voted “Director of the Year” by the magazine Opernwelt and joins Staatsoper Hannover for the first time.

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