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BÄRENREITER'S URTEXT OF DVOŘÁK'S RUSALKA
Antonín Dvořák. Rusalka: Lyric Fairy Tale in Three Acts, op. 114. Urtext. Edited by Robert Simon and Jonáš Hájek. English translation: Rodney Blumer; German translation: Eberhard Schmidt. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2023. [xxiii, 775 p. BA 10438. ISMN: 9790260109384. $576.]
Antonín Dvořák. Rusalka: Lyric Fairy Tale in Three Acts, op. 114. Vocal score based on the period Piano Reduction of 1905 arranged by Petr Koronthály Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2023. [xxii, 336 p. BA 10438-90. ISMN: 9790260109391. $71.]
Although Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) is best known for his orchestral and chamber music, he spent much of his creative life as a composer of opera of various kinds, nearly all of which were produced in the Prague Provisional and Czech National Theatres during his lifetime. By the time of his death, he was the leading Czech opera composer after Smetana, and with eleven works to his credit (this total includes his two completely different settings of the libretto, The King and the Charcoal Burner [Král a uhlíř]) one of the most prolific.
The two main periods of operatic production were in the 1870s and during his last eight years. The early 1870s saw Dvořák establishing a public reputation in Prague which, inevitably, meant adding to the repertoire of the Prague Provisional Theatre (opened in 1862) including three comic operas and the grand opera, Vanda. Of these early operas, the third of the comedies, The Peasant a Rogue (šelma sedlák) had the greatest success with twenty performances in the five years before the Provisional Theatre gave way to the National Theatre in 1883 (the theater opened briefly in 1881, but was severely damaged by fire). During the 1880s, Dvořák's reputation grew abroad in spectacular fashion and an appreciable amount of his time was spent fulfilling commissions from abroad, notably the seventh symphony, the oratorio St Ludmila, and the Requiem Mass for England. Nevertheless, the decade also saw two notable operatic successes in Prague, the grand opera Dimitrij and the semi-serious The Jacobin ( Jakobín).
While the nature of his creativity changed in America, he was still considering operatic subjects, including Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, and partway through his stay in New York he made very extensive revisions to Dimitrij. But back in his native Bohemia, his...