Dvorak: Rusalka

The Age

Thursday February 7, 2008

Michael Shmith

Dvorak: Rusalka

Cheryl Barker, Bruce Martin, Rosario La Spina; Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, conductor Richard Hickox

Chandos

4/5

Here is a live recording of Opera Australia's production of Rusalka, recorded during its Sydney season early last year. The cast, led by the incandescent Cheryl Barker as the doomed wood nymph, is strong. The conducting, from the company's music director, Richard Hickox, is luminescent: this is clearly a work Hickox loves, and the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra responds with beautiful playing. The prince is sung perhaps a little too coarsely by Rosario La Spina, but Anne-Marie Owens' wicked witch, Jezibaba, and Elizabeth Whitehouse's foreign princess are characterful and musically precise. Bruce Martin is a stentorian water sprite - a real father figure - and wood nymphs and others are all fine. I'm not sure why the work is sung in the original: there is no Czech, as far as I can see, in the cast, and there is a serviceable English translation. But this is to quibble in the face of a significant recording that shows Opera Australia's strengths as an ensemble company. Just listen to the chorus to see what I mean. I'm not sure I would yield Charles Mackerras' Decca recording, but this runs it close. -- MICHAEL SHMITH

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