Last night was the first performance of The Pepys Ensemble’s production of Dvorak’s Rusalka. directed by Jeff Clarke.

A lyrical fairy tale in three acts, it features a beautiful water nymph who falls in love with a human and begs a witch to make her mortal too.

Of course, this being opera, there is a penalty to be paid.

The nymph is betrayed by her lover and doomed forever to sink down in the lake to the realm of the demons of death.

Dvorak’s opera, part of the great late 19th century Czech and German tradition that attributes symbolic force to the forests, conjures up woods and moonlight and magic.
This makes it all the more strange that the staging of this production has been given a modern twist.

Jezibaba, the witch (Helen Johnson), is cast as a stern, besuited medic, surrounded by efficient nurses and great jumbles of ancient computers and other bits and pieces of technology.

It was somehow all a bit jarring and cluttered in the confined space of the cloisters, especially when contrasted against the serene underwater sequences involving the water sprites or rusalki.

These were very beautifully portrayed last night by Tabitha Hamill, Juliet Mason, Amy Wetherill and Rose White.

That said, it was still enormously enjoyable, with a superb performance by Yvette Bonner, as Rusalka, who looked born to the role of a nymph, and whose sublime voice seemed impossibly huge for her tiny frame.

Julian Close, who sang the part of her father the Water Gnome with great presence — mainly from a wheelchair for no apparent reason, and another modern twist to the tale —was also a triumph.

Philip O’Brien as the Prince was less convincing because he seemed too corporeal for a nymph to fall in love with, but perhaps that was the point.

Donna Bateman was splendid as the red hot seductive Foreign Princess, and the orchestra, conducted by Oliver Gooch, captured Dvorak’s melodies perfectly.

Jackie Chappell, Bath Chronicle

THE overwhelming atmosphere of Antonin Dvorak’s Rusalka is one of water, and so it was perhaps fitting that Iford Festival’s first in-house production opened on a very wet week in the valley of the river Frome. Jeff Clarke may have set this magical allegorical tale in a land where witches work on computers and water gnomes rely on wheelchairs, but the essence is still of the doomed but inescapable nature of romance.

Rusalka is one of many daughters of the Gnome, but drawn by the beauty of the silver moon comes to the surface of the lake, where she sees a handsome prince. He swims and she wraps herself around him, in the shape of a wave. But she falls in love, and wants more. Persuading her anxious father and his carers (aka the witches) to transform her to a human, she accepts that she must be mute.

After some time the prince, to whom Rusalka is now betrothed, wants a warmer consort, and flirts with a visiting princess, unaware that she is one of the witches in disguise.

Rusalka is forswom, and so doomed to a life under the waters, luring men to their deaths. But love’s redemptive powers enable her at least to die with her remorseful lover. Iford’s cloister was covered and blacked out for this production, designed by Elroy Ashmore. Dappled lights created watery movement (aided by the sound of raindrops) and the central well became a focal writhing knot of former faithless lovers. The hospital and office scenes gave pause for thought - not all flattering according to some members of the audience. Rusalka is shot through with the aqueous references that inform so much Czech music, and conductor Oliver Gooch and his excellent small orchestra increasingly evoked the elusive darkening shimmer as the evening went on. Yvette Bonner is a moving Rusalka, with the rich tones of Donna Bateman contrasting as the seductress. Julian Close, an Iford favourite, was in fine voice as the enigmatic Water Gnome. John Lofthouse was the huflingly heroic but spoiled prince.

One of the musical highlights of the evening comes from the trio of Donna Bateman, Helen Johnson and Catrine Kirkman, even if many of the audience
were a bit lost as they ran from one bank of computer bits to another.

All praise to the Iford Festival for launching their own production at this very precarious time for garden opera.

Gay Pirrie-Weir, Fosseway Magazine

Perhaps it was the nymph-like sculpture high above the River Frome, which runs alongside Iford Manor, that inspired Iford Arts to make Dvorak's Rusalka its first in-house production. It was certainly an apt choice for the tiny cloister in Harold Peto's wooded garden, where streams abound and water sprites might linger. The choice of director and conductor was also inspired. Jeff Clarke and Oliver Gooch conjured a magical atmosphere, scaling the opera to chamber proportions with such a sure touch as to make one feel disinclined to watch a full-scale production again.

The idea of Dvorak purely as a symphonist disregards the often extreme delicacy of his writing. Here, Iain Farrington's arrangement was faithful to the spirit of Dvorak's instrumentation, with flute, timpani, harp and horn bringing an impressionistic shimmer. Gooch also let the recurring motifs reveal the composer's astute characterisation.
Yvette Bonner was perfectly cast in the title role: a petite, alluring figure whose gliding and insinuating movements were sensuously graceful. Her voice, by no means massive but clear and true, always expressed Rusalka's anguish, first aspiring to human love and then, when it fails, resigning herself to fate, condemned to haunt the prince she adored. Julian Close's imperious Water-Gnome and Philip O'Brien's Prince were also strong, while Helen Johnson's witch Jezibaba was all the more ominous for being a Dr Jekyll figure. The surgery to remove Rusalka's scales was just one of the clever details from designer Elroy Ashmore, making so much more than a woodland idyll.

Rian Evans, Guardian