Rusalka: When an Age-Old Fairy Tale Finds Its Voice Again

Opera Queensland's production of Dvořák's Rusalka has been playing to Brisbane audiences at QPAC's Glasshouse Theatre since 25 June, and it establishes its underwater world in style. The opening scene places us in Rusalka's sea world proper — her sisters and her father, Vodník the Water King, glimpsed deep beneath the surface, lit low and hazy beneath a mirrored ceiling of floating lilies, as though the audience itself is looking up from underwater. Behind the performers, a screen carries a soft, magical projection of a solitary figure swimming — a glimpse of the human world beyond, and the object of Rusalka's longing to be part of it.

The Story

Rusalka is Dvořák's best-known opera, and by some distance his most performed — more productions are mounted worldwide each year than of all his other nine operas combined. Its roots lie closer to Hans Christian Andersen's original The Little Mermaid than to any Disney adaptation. Rusalka is a water nymph, unhappy in the underwater world she shares with her sisters and her father, Vodník, the Water King. When a Prince swims into her lake, she sees in him not romance so much as an escape — a way into a world where, her father tells her, humans have souls and water spirits do not.

To become human, Rusalka strikes a bargain with the witch Ježibaba: she can walk on land, but only by giving up her voice. It's a sacrifice that anchors the entire opera, and one that gives Rusalka's best-loved aria, "Song to the Moon," its aching, wordless yearning even before a note is sung.

A Fairy Tale Reclaimed

Director Sarah Giles has been explicit about not wanting to retell this as a straightforward romance. Her Rusalka is an active heroine rather than a passive one — a woman "courageously seeking where she belongs," as Giles has put it, rather than a figure who simply trades herself for a Prince's affection. That reframing was evident throughout: this was a Rusalka driven by her own restlessness and search for identity, not simply devotion.

The production's structure leans into this. Each of the opera's three acts unfolds in a distinct world — the underwater realm, the human world of the palace, and the strange netherworld Rusalka is banished to after her bargain sours — and the visual language shifts accordingly. That opening underwater scene, with Rusalka's sisters and father sitting deep beneath the mirrored, lily-strewn surface and a magical swimming figure projected on the screen behind them, gave the unfolding story of longing clear visual shape before a word was sung.

The Performances

The principal cast carried the emotional weight of the piece with real distinction. Eleanor Lyons's Rusalka moved between despair and hope with a voice of real subtlety and power, never overplaying the character's yearning. Opposite her, Rosario La Spina's Prince and Warwick Fyfe's Vodník both brought weight and presence to roles that could easily be overshadowed by the title character — Fyfe in particular lending the Water King a gravity that made Rusalka's defiance of him land with real consequence. Ashlyn Tymms's Ježibaba and Eva Kong's Duchess rounded out a cast where every principal register — vocal and physical — was doing serious dramatic work.

Design and Orchestra

As a three-act opera spanning close to three hours, Rusalka asks a lot of its design team, and this production delivered at every turn. Charles Davis's set and Renée Mulder's costumes shifted with the story's changing worlds — stunning changes in both stage design and costuming set the tone and emotional register of each act in turn, from the underwater realm's translucent stillness to the ornate excess of the human palace.

That large screen behind the performers proved to be one of the production's most playful touches, bookending the opera as it returned in the final act's strange netherworld, echoing the same submerged, magical imagery that opened the show. It's a technique increasingly common in contemporary opera and theatre staging — leaning on large-scale video projection, alongside the built set, to expand a stage's sense of space without relying on set changes alone. David Bergman's video design and Paul Jackson's lighting worked in lockstep to hold these moments together without ever feeling like mere scene-changes rather than storytelling.

Underscoring all of it was the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, playing Dvořák's lush, Wagnerian-inflected score with a reverence that filled the Glasshouse Theatre and anchored the opera's considerable emotional arc. This is a score built on shifting orchestral colour as much as vocal melody, and the orchestra gave it the weight it demands.

The Verdict

Rusalka is, at its core, a story about first love, about entering an unfamiliar world, and about what is lost — physically, vocally, irrevocably — in the process of trying to belong somewhere else. Opera Queensland's production found both the joy and the profound sadness in that arc, delivering a tale that ends in tragedy while still, somehow, leaving room for hope.

World-class, beautifully paced, and spectacularly designed, this Rusalka is proof — if any were needed — that an age-old craft still has plenty to say in the 21st century.

Rusalka runs at the Glasshouse Theatre, QPAC, until 4 July 2026.