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 make this aria her ‘signature piece’. At the end of this article , I hope it becomes clear why -- and how -- she made this confident response; for , in truth, Rusalka does bear the indelible stamp of Ms Fleming’s initials. Not only that but , amongst other things, she has shamelessly broken all Dvorak's rules and, in the process, has left all other Divas at an unutterable disadvantage.

No comparison demonstrates these claims more clearly than that obtaining when Ms Fleming’s very polished interpretation of Rusalka is juxtaposed with that of the coleen from Krasnodar, Ms Netrebko.

While both Divas, Russian and American, are entirely 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. She prays to the moon to be sent her prince of love. ‘Silvery moon’, she sings,

shine on us,

shine on us

Moon ahhhhh! Moon,

Shine on us.

These are the hopeful sentiments upon which her final few notes are devoted:

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

The irritating props aside, this is really a wonderful Rusalka. As ever, her voice is delicious; it is like 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 Rusalka’s finish.Now let us listen to Renee Fleming’s interpretation of this ‘same’ aria:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_lbJ1MaDeoAnyone 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; without a tail, the dog, the fish and the Diva are apt to lose their balance. And in a Diva this is fatal. ‘Silvery moon’, she sings,

shine on us,

shine on us

MOON, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! MOON,

SHINE ON US!

In Fleming's cadence , we get a totally different ending, not just a longer and more angry ending, but one that is calculated to rebalance the harmonies that went before. It is more of a ‘completion’, as understood in musical technology, than an ‘ending’. The climax is not a matter of chronology as one might well imagine in a Coda. On the contrary, it is a bit like what the Bible says: ‘that which shall be first shall be last, and that which shall be last shall be first’. It is sometimes like that with musical matters also. It is a matter of history - a history that has strong reflexive resonances, so that what has transpired since the sounding of the first tonic is revisitable aurally (like a recapitulation in the clasical sonata) at any time before the the final tonic kicks in. What this means is that every single note, interval, marking, contour and musical event is both transparent and answerable at the final cadential climax. When people say that ‘so-and-so died. His whole life flashed before him before he died’. That is precisely what the cadential climax does in Rusalka and Ms Fleming has engineered it such that, without Dvorak’s help, everyone has time enough to ponder with their ears upon the purport of Rusalka’s entire aria.

In this way, and in this sense, all of Fleming’s labours are revisited, relived, complimented and rewarded; all her previous toil resonates anew as she gathers them into a most poignant climax, which becomes by right the cornucopia of the aria’s emotional angst. Anna Netrebko, however, even if blessed with an unbeatable voice and a definite language advantage, allows her labours in the end to be somewhat squandered. She lets her work, and the beautiful way she has worked the cadences throughout the aria, slip like a trifle into a Czech lake. The overall effect is that the technique (and musicality) of Ms Fleming defeats by far the natural outpourings of Anna Netrebko, as well as Dvorak’s original invention!

In some ways, of course, it is not Anna's fault. But, then, whose fault is it? How come these two Divas seem in the final cadence to be ostensibly singing from two identical scores , yet sound so different? Is it the fault of her minders, trainers, and teachers?

I have said that the two Divas sang ‘ostensibly’ from the same song.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 aria’s final cadence, we have found a most remarkable contrast between that sung by Netrebko and that sung by Fleming. It is only when we hear Ms Fleiming’s final cadence does it dawn on us that the Divas could be singing from two totally different scores. In conjoining the climax to the final cadence, the emotional prayer of the Water-nymph has been one of exponential proportions. Perhaps it is this disproportion that needs to be explained.

The aria has been so constructed by Dvorak that the final cadence -- indeed, the final few notes -- are the moment of the aria's climax. To bring both climax and final cadence together in one moment 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, and only then crashes -- dives, in fact -- to a sudden sub-aquatic tonic.

It is truly wonderful stuff: this final cadence alone is the female version of Nessun Dorma!

But how, one might ask, is it claimed that the Divas are singing from a different score?

To understand what has happened is not easy to explain.

 if we listen to several Divas, all singing the exact same aria -- say, Lucia Popp, Gabriela Benackova, Milada Subrtova, 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 Rusalka as directed.

Maybe the directions are the problem; for notwithstanding his emotionally powerful lead-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, he devotes a short note and a short-circuited resolution to the climax he has otherwise so meticulously prepared for something more exciting. It sounds great. But if you listen to any of the Divas -- or as in this case, to Anna Netrebko -- you will hear this final, somewhat sudden -- almost chastising -- descent at the end. Indeed, one may go away with the feeling that one has heard a splendid aria, well sung, but too suddenly ended. And this may have been the specific aim of Dvorak: one is not always acquainted with Czechoslovakian Waternymphs as the maestro. In any event, tens of thousands of pilgrims make their way to 'YOU TUBE' to hear it: and while there at it , to get a gander of Anna Nebtrebko in a bikini. But It is only when one listens to Renee Fleming’s singular interpretation that one becomes aware that one is in the presence of a much more revolutionary Rusalka than was hitherto contemplated.

Anna Netrebko (as Rusalka) has prayed that the Moon might send her princely lover to her. After her prayers, she submerges herself like a submarine with girlish haste and almost Christian contrition. As we have seen, Ms Fleming does not come in a bikini; neither is she in a swimming mood, nor, for that matter, is she likely to be fobbed off by hunky silhouttes. If anything, she is furious. We all know she has prahyed most fervently -- movingly, in fact -- to an indifferent moon; but, now that it is time for her to take her departure, she refuses to play the role of the fat lady: she simply will not budge unil she has had her say. She remains on in office un-apologetically defiant, with anger in her eyes, terror in her tongue and revolution in her heart. Like Hamlet , she is now Christian or pagan to whatever end may come, but that end cannot be indifference!Where all the other Divas have gone, Ms Fleming will not go -- not even for Dvorak! So, when Ms Fleming (as Rusalka) climaxes, there is no scurrying into the safety of a 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): and she seems to hold on to it forever, which is maybe twice, three times-- but more likely ten times -- longer than any other Diva (including Anna Netrebko) : so long, in fact, that the orchestra have packed it in and are taming 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 with an American Spillvill accent: (which, incidentally ,was where Dvorak spoke Czech to his Czech friends and ex-pats.)

At first, one doesn’t know what TV programme one is on. It’s like something one would see on one of David Attenborough’s wild-life programmes; for Ms Fleming turns herself on stage into a raging tigress. In order to protect something primordial , and red in tooth and in claw, this modest American Diva now wrings and tears at the tune’s hind-quarters until the entire aria is purged of its anaemic short breadths. Amazingly, she holds the aria to its organic high promise. She compels and hurls it to its logical and emotional conclusion. There she stands above the Gods (and the camera man) 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 can the orchestra go home to their families. 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, Rusalka has become more Fleming than Dvorak, more American than Czech.

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

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, searing 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 and the Holy Family would make do (after the sacrament of matrimony) , if the pagan moon didn’t . Of course, the one remedial belief is as cold and barren as the other, but Ms Fleming’s impatience and 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 male-dominated monogamy or 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 (including the new one!)to do to all women what is no more than its fertile and servile duty. From a plea and a 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 at the hands of world religions and other male war-mongers.

When I shall 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!

Finally, while it appears of no consequence, one still sneakishly wonders from whom the camera-man, particularly at the aria’s great climax, got his directions. If it was from Ms Fleming’s impressario , then he certainly got his money's worth. If, however, it came from Ms Fleming herself, then it constitutes an even more worrying stroke of genius than that exhibited in her singing !

Seamus Breathnach

www.irish-criminsology.com