THE BATTLE FOR RUSALKA

WHO IS THE THE REAL RUSALKA -- ANNA NETREBKO OR RENEE FLEMING?

When Renee Fleming was asked in an inverview what aria she liked to sing most, she replied instantly:

‘The Song to the Moon, from Rusalka, is my signature piece.”

I don't think people in general understand to what lengths Ms Fleming has gone to sing this song as she does. Amongst other things, she has shamelessly broken all Dvorak's rules to do so. In the process, moreover, she has left all other Divas at an unutterable disadvantage.

I cannot conceive of a more apt comparison than that sung by the very polished Ms. Fleming and the coleen from Krasnodar, Ms Netrebko.

While both Divas, Russian and American, are utterly adorable I have to confess a weakness. I am incurably in love with Anna Netrebko’s girlish ways and Russian voice. Above all else, I want to hear her sing Russalka at her best. As painful as it is to admit it, I feel at the moment that she has to learn some more discipline: and what’s even worse -- she has to learn it from Ms Fleming! Indeed, she cannot learn it from any other living Diva. There is no other way! I believe that Anna Netrebko can be the best Rusalka that (n)ever lived only if she can learn something -- something very precious -- from Ms. Fleming.

What could one accomplished Diva possibly learn from another? And how are all other Divas at an unutterable disadvantage? Surely these outrageous statements require an explanation -- if not an apology!

If one might be permitted to apologise after one has explained, the apology will be better appreciated. But first one should listen to these two Divas ostensibly singing the same song:

Let us listen to Anna Netrebko first, paying special attention to the final few notes:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iLqXZHO45o&feature=related


The irritating props aside, this is really a wonderful Russalka. As ever, her voice is delicious dark chocolate. It is heavenly, glorious, full and rich, as a rose is rich. But there is the suggestion of a serious fault. It occurs in Russalka’s finish.

Now let us listen to Renee Fleming’s interpretation of this ‘same’ aria:


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_lbJ1MaDeo

Anyone with an ear to hear will appreciate the colossal difference in the interpretation of the final cadence. But since the cadence is the climax, it sums up the whole song. Don’t let anyone tell you that the tail does not wag the dog; with its tail the dog, the fish and the Diva can lose their balance. And in Russalka this is most assuredly the case. In Fleming , therefore, all her labours are rewarded; she harvests all her previous toil and gathers her into the climax the cornucopia of the aria’s emotional angst. Anna, however, even if blessed with an unbeatable voice and a language advantage, allows her labours to be squandered: the technique of Fleming defeating by far the natural outpouring of Netrebko!

This, of course, is not Anna's fault. But, then, whose fault is it? How come they are ostensibly singing from two identical scores that sound so unmistakeably different? Is it the fault of her minders, trainers, and teachers?

I have said that the two Divas sang ‘ostensibly’ the same song, because that is what we are led to believe. And in so far as Song to the Moon, was written by Dvorak in G flat Major and in ⅜ time, that is the case. But in examining the final cadence to the aria, we find a remarkable contrast between that sung by Netrebko and that sung by Fleming. But each of the Divas now appear to be singing from a totally different score. And so important is the final cadence that it must be explained, because it radiates meaning to the whole aria.

The aria has been so constructed by Dvorak that the final cadence -- indeed, the final few notes -- are the moment of the aria's great climax. To bring both climax and final cadence together is no mean feat on Dvorak’s part ; it demonstrates his genius in these matters.

But this cadential climax is also unusual in another way. In order to enhance its impact, Dvorak allows the cadence to dawdle close to a recitative base, then with the speed and assent of the entry to Nessun Dorma, it rockets upwards in sequential momentum to the high B flat in the Soprano’s register before crashing -- diving, in fact -- to a sudden sub-aquatic tonic.

It is truly wonderful stuff. But how is it claimed that Netrebko and Fleming are singing from a different score?

To understand what has happened is not easy.

if we listen to the following Divas singing the exact same aria -- say, Lucia Popp, Gabriela Benackova, Milada Subrtova and Anna Netrebko and Renee Fleming, it will soon become evident that Ms Fleming -- not Anna Netrebko -- is the odd Diva out. All the rest sing Dvorak's Russalka as directed.

Maybe the directions are the problem; for notwithstanding his emotionally powerful run-in to the cadential climax, Dvorak -- perhaps for other reasons -- only devotes two thirds of a bar to the high B flat, or in any event devotes a short note and a short-circuited resolution to a climax so meticulously prepared. And it sounds great. If you listen to any of the Divas -- or as in this case, to Anna Netrebko -- one will observe this final, almost chastising descent at the end. Indeed, one may go away with the feeling that they have heard a splendid aria well sung. Tens of thousands come to You Tube to hear it. But It is only when you hear Renee Fleming’s singular interpretation that the dawn breaks on a more revolutionary Russalka.

Russalka has prayed to the Moon to send her prince of love. After her prayer, she (as in Netrebko) submerges herself with girlish haste and almost Christian contrition. As we have seen, Ms Fleming is not in swimming mood, nor is she so easy to get rid of: she refuses to submerge so readily. Indeed, she prays most fervently -- movingly, in fact -- to an indifferent moon; but, when it comes time for her to take her departure, she refuses to play the role of the fat lady, she simply will not budge ; she remains on in office unapologetically rude, revolutionary and pagan to whatever end may come!

Where all the other Divas have gone, Ms Fleming will not go --not even for Dvorak! So, when Ms Fleming (as Russalka) climaxes, there is no diving into the safety of a Czech lake. On the contrary, the earth trembles. When she reaches the high B flat in the final cadence, far from bailing out modestly, she holds on to the B flat ‘for bare life’ (if one might use such an apt expression); indeed, she holds on to it forever, which is maybe twice, three times, ten times, longer than any other Diva (including Anna Netrebko) : so long , in fact, that the orchestra have packed it in and taken their break, while Ms Fleming, still vibrating in flagrante delicioso, sees the aria through to the last syllable of its emotional obligation : ‘durchgefuert’, as Schonberg would say! In this climax, she is the consummate creative artist - and I personally don’t care too much that she sings Czech in a Spilvill American accent: (which, incidentally , is where Dvorak spoke Czech to his Czech friends and ex-pats.)

Like a tigress protecting something primordial , and red in tooth and in claw, she wrings and tears at the tune’s hind-quarters until the entire aria is purged of its anaemic short breadths. She holds the tune to its organic high promise. She compels and hurls it to its logical and emotional conclusion. There she stands above the Gods on Olympus, vibrating in catharsis a B flat with which she consciously purges all that has preceded it, until the emotional charge has travelled cap-a-pe from its first to its last tonic, and has flowed into its final moonlit syllable. Only then are all issues resolved, only then is the aria allowed to close, not so much with a whimper as with a whimper after an earth-shattering, all-merciful, mother of all rumbles in the jungle!

Renee Fleming has re-written Dvorak; Dvorak would hardly recognise ‘his’ aria or understand the emotional re-orientation. In many ways,therefore, Russalka has become more Fleming than Dvorak, more American than Czech.

The only question pending is ; has she done the music and Rusalka a service?

By her prolongation of one well-chosen, emotionally strategic note, she has changed utterly the whole tone, balance, meaning, emotional discharge and general aesthetic of the Water-nymph's entire aria. In her person and in her performance a terrible scorching beauty is born!

But further, she has transformed Rusalka’ s B flat into an interminable primal scream -- a demand for human love from a cold world and a cold moon. In true pagan if not in American style, Ms Fleming commands the moon to provide her with a lover -- predating the Judeo-Christian opportunity to leap in and claim that Christianity would provide it, if the pagan moon didn’t . Of course, the one remedial belief is as cold and barren as the other, but Ms Fleming’s command , her anger, is immediate and modern. Russalka is the life-giving, life-affirming fertility of Sile-na-gig, or what many have called the ‘divine feminine’. She is not prepared to live without love -- nor will she put up with the excuses of a cold and distant moon.

Personally speaking, I can’t imagine any self-respecting Czech Water-nymph complaining about the new arrangement. It is true that Rusalka has undergone a process that is otherwise known as transubstantiation, where the nymph changes from an uncrucified but pining mermaid at the mercy of the moon to a goddess, a Diva, that commands the moon and the natural world order to do to all women what is no more than its fertile and servile duty. From a Christian prayer to a pagan command is not an easy transition, but Ms Fleming has accomplished it in spades - so much so , in fact, that she has now made this beautiful pagan hymn unsingable in any other way except her way.

And I for one am most grateful for it, not least because it is the specific business of the Diva to protect the Water-nymph, whose entire species is very much in jeopardy of extinction by religious and other male war-mongers.

When I hear Anna Netrebko singing Rusalka from Ms Fleming’s hymn-sheet , I will know that Water-nymphs shall have been saved, that I shall have gone to Heaven, and that all my prayers as well as my apologies shall have become redundant!


Seamus Breathnach

www.irish-criminology.com