Quick: name a Dvorák opera!  “Rusalka?”  Score one point.  Now, list the 11 others.  Yup, an even dozen, of which the tale of the water sprite was composed at the end of his life.  A quarter of a century earlier, for his fourth opera Dvorák chose to venture into the land of the five-act grand opera with Vanda.

Was he listening to a lot of Meyerbeer?  Wikipedia is rather terse when it comes to a synopsis: “The story is about the Polish queen who drowns herself in the Vistula in order to save her people from the German invaders.”  But the lovely people who maintain the official Dvorák Web site will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about drowned queens.

Antonín Dvorák: Vanda

Národní divadlo Praha
Gerd Albrecht, conductor
09 May 2004

Vanda – Olga Romanenko
Slavoj – Valentin Prolat
Roderich – Ivan Kusnjer
Božena – Jolana Fogasová
Pagan High Priest – Oleg Korotkov
Lumír – Roman Janál
Homena – Yvona Skvárová