Rusalka

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A Term Paper Presented to the Faculty Of Adventist University of the Philippines Academy MUSIC Department

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In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Subject Music IV

Allen Jade L. Golosino To: Jewel Bitco Solidum February 27, 2012

Introduction
Rusalka (Czech) is an opera ('lyric fairy tale') by Antonn Dvok. The Czech librettowas written by the poet Jaroslav Kvapil (18681950) based on the fairy tales of Karel Jaromr Erben and Boena Nmcov. Rusalka is one of the most successful Czech operas, and represents a cornerstone of the repertoire of Czech opera houses A Rusalka is a water spritefrom Slavic mythology, usually inhabiting a lake or river. Dvok had played viola for many years in pit orchestras in Prague (Estates Theatre from 1857-59 while a student, then from 1862-71 at the Provisional Theatre). He thus had direct experience of a wide range of operaby Mozart, Weber, Rossini, Lortzing, Verdi, Wagner and Smetana.Rusalka was the ninth opera he composed. For many years unfamiliarity with Dvoks operas outside Czechoslovakia helped reinforce a perception that composition of operas was a marginal activity, and that despite the beauty of its melodies and orchestral timbres Rusalka was not a central part of his output or of international lyric theatre. In recent years it has been performed more regularly by major opera companies. The most popular excerpt from Rusalka is the "Song to the Moon" ("Msku na nebi hlubokm") from Act 1 which is often performed in concert and recorded separately. It has also been arranged for violin and used on film sound tracks. Rusalka has its first ever staging by The Royal Opera in a production new to the Company. The tragic story of the water nymph who longs to walk on the ground as a human draws on the richness of Czech mythology a prince, a princess, a water goblin and a witch are the other main characters, mixing the supernatural and the mortal. Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabitos contemporary interpretation sets the opera in a seedy backstreet world of today to throw into sharp relief the dark wit and darker emotions of the operas story of love, desire and despair. Rusalkas Song to the Moon may be a favourite popular classic, but it is just one of many lovely vocal melodies in a richly Romantic score with the Czech folk inflections characteristic of Dvoks music.

Antonin Dvorak
Antonin Dvorak was a son of butcher, but he did not follow his father's trade. While assisting his father part-time, he studied music, and graduated from the Prague Organ School in 1859. He also was an accomplished violinist and violist, and joined the Bohemian Theatre Orchestra, which was under the baton of Bedrich Smetana in 1860s. For financial reasons he quit the orchestra and focused on composing and teaching. He fell in love with one of his students, but she married another guy. Her sister was available, so Dvorak married the sister, Anna, in 1873, and they had nine children.

Dvorak's early compositions were influenced by Richard Wagner and Johannes Brahms, and with their promotion his music became performed in European capitals and received international acclaim. His performances in 1880s of Slavonic Dances, the Sixth Symphony and the Stabat Mater were a success in England, and Dvorak received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge. He made a successful concert tour in Russia in 1890, and became a professor at the Prauge Conservatory. In 1892 he received an invitation to America from Jeaunnette Thurber, the founder of he National Conservatory of Music in New York City. Dvorak was the Director of the National Conservatory in New York for three years (1892-95), where he also taught composition and carried on his cross-natural studies.

Dvorak broadened his experiences through studying the music of the Native Americans and African Americans, many of whom became his students and friends. Dvorak was inspired by the originality of indigenous American music and culture, as well as by the spirituals and by the singing of his African American students. Dvorac incorporated his new ideas, blended with his Bohemian roots, into his well-known Symphony No.9 in E minor "From the New World". He worked on this symphony for most of the spring and summer of 1893, and made it's glorious premiere in Carnegie Hall in December, 1893. In America he also wrote the remarkable Cello Concerto and two string quartets, including the Quartet in F ("The American"). Dvorak was doing very well in New York financially, but his heart was in Prague and he left America for his Czech Motherland. He had a big family with his wife and nine children in Prague. He became the Director of the Prague Conservatory in 1901 and kept the position until his death in 1904.

Orchestral Music Dvok wrote nine symphonies, of which the best known must be the Symphony No. 9 From the New World, written in 1893 and first performed in New York in the same year. This New World Symphony derived some inspiration from a Czech translation of Longfellows poem Hiawatha. Works for solo instrument and orchestra by Dvok include an important Cello Concerto, a Violin Concerto and a slightly less well known Piano Concerto. The Romance for solo violin and orchestra and Silent Woods for cello and orchestra make interesting and attractive additions to solo repertoire for both instruments. Other orchestral works include two sets of Slavonic Dances, arrangements of works originally designed for piano duet, and three Slavonic Rhapsodies. Overtures include My Home, In Natures Realm, Othello, Hussite and Carnival. To this one may add the Scherzo capriccioso of 1883, a Polonaise, written four years before, and the splendid Serenade for Strings of 1875. The Symphonic Variations meet the challenge of an apparently intractable theme and the 10Legends were orchestrated by the composer from his original piano-duet version. To this may be added the symphonic poems The Noonday Witch, The Golden Spinning-Wheel and The Wild Dove, works that seem to explore new ground, with their narrative content. Chamber Music Dvok left 14 string quartets, of which the best known is the so-called American Quartet, No. 12 in F major, written in 1893, the year of the New World Symphony. The composition of Quartets Nos 13 and 14, in 1895, seems to have taken place over the same period. From the American period comes the G major Sonatina for violin and piano, its second movement sometimes known as Indian Lament. Of the four surviving piano trios the fourth, called Dumkybecause of its use of a Bohemian national dance-form, is the best known, closely rivalled in popularity by the third. Dvoks quintets for piano and strings or strings alone offer further pleasure, as well as the String Sextet and the charming Terzetto for two violins and viola.

Piano Music The best known of all the pieces Dvok wrote for the piano must be the Humoresque in G flat major, the seventh of a set of eight. Close to this come the two sets of Slavonic Dances for piano duet. Operas Dvok wrote 10 operas, the first in 1870 and the last completed and staged in 1903. Rusalka, first produced in 1900, provides a well-known concert aria, O silver moon. Other operas have had less currency abroad, although they have some importance in the Czech musical revival. The composer himself set considerable store by his music for the theatre, whether in comic village operas in the manner of Smetanas The Bartered Bride or in more ambitious works based on Czech legend. Vocal and Choral Music Dvok wrote a number of songs and a popular set of Moravian Duets for soprano and contralto. The most popular of the songs is the fourth of Seven Gypsy Songs, Op. 55 Songs my mother taught me, also familiar from various arrangements. Some of Dvoks choral works were written for the flourishing amateur choral societies of England, in Leeds, Birmingham and London. These include the oratorio St Ludmilla, settings of the Mass and Requiem Mass, and a setting of the Te Deum which was first performed in New York in 1892. Earlier choral works include a setting of the Stabat mater and of Psalm CXLIX, first performed in Prague in 1880 and 1879 respectively.

Brief Background of the Opera

Act 1: A meadow by the edge of a lake Three wood-sprites tease the Water-Goblin, ruler of the lake. Rusalka, the Water-Goblin's daughter, tells her father she has fallen in love with a human Prince who comes to hunt around the lake, and she wants to become human to embrace him. He tells her it is a bad idea, but nonetheless steers her to a witch, Jeibaba, for assistance. Rusalka sings her Song to the Moon, asking it to tell the Prince of her love. Jeibaba tells Rusalka that if she becomes human and is betrayed by the prince, both she and the prince will be eternally damned, and that Rusalka will lose the power of speech when human. Rusalka agrees to the terms and drinks a potion. The Prince, hunting a white doe, finds Rusalka, embraces her, and leads her away, as her father and sisters lament. Act 2 The garden of the Prince's castle A Gamekeeper and his nephew, the Kitchen-Boy, note that the Prince is to be married to a mute and nameless bride, suspecting witchcraft and doubting it will last, as the prince is already lavishing attentions on a Foreign Princess who is a wedding guest. The Foreign Princess, jealous, curses the couple. The prince rejects Rusalka. The Water-Goblin takes Rusalka back to his pond. The Foreign Princess, having successfully won the Prince's affection, now scorns it. Act 3 A meadow by the edge of a lake Rusalka asks Jeibaba for a solution to her woes and is told she can save herself if she kills the Prince with the dagger she is given. Rusalka rejects this, throwing the dagger into the lake. Rusalka becomes a bludika, a spirit of death living in the depths of the lake, emerging only to lure humans to their deaths. The Gamekeeper and the Kitchen Boy consult Jeibaba about the Prince, who, they say, has been betrayed by Rusalka. The Water-Goblin says that it was actually the Prince that betrayed Rusalka. The wood-sprites mourn Rusalka's plight. The Prince, searching for his white doe, comes to the lake, senses Rusalka, and calls for her. He asks her to kiss him, even knowing her kiss means death and damnation. They kiss and he dies; and the Water-Goblin comments that "All sacrifices are futile." Rusalka thanks the Prince for letting her experience human love, commends his soul to God, and returns to her place in the depths of the lake as a demon of death.

Story from the bible related to the story of the opera

Based on the story, the Rusalka ask her father to be in a human form to love the Prince. She gave up her powers just to love that Prince. She gave all that she has just to experience the human form and shows that there is one person that is important to her. It is like Jesus Christ, who came to earth just to show how much he loves us that He is willing to die for our sins. He experience sorrow here on earth to show that He really love us that each one of us is important to him. He died for our sins to be forgiven.

Summary
Dvok's music is generally through composed, and uses motifs for Rusalka, her damnation, the water sprite and the forest. His word setting is expressive while allowing for nationally-inflected passages, and Grove judges the work shows the composer at the height of his maturity. He uses established theatrical devices dance sections, comedy (Gamekeeper and Turnspit) and pictorial musical depiction of nature (forest and lake) Rodney Milnes admired the "wealth of melodic patterns that are dramatic in themselves and its shimmering orchestration".One writer considered the final section of the opera the duet for the Prince and Rusalka - as "12 or so of the most glorious minutes in all opera" in their "majestic, almost hymnic solemnity" while another described the opera as a "vivid, profoundly disturbing drama".