12. Reframing the Fairytale. Fairytales are Fungible. Stories like "The Little Mermaid" that are found in many cultures tend to reflect the sensibilities of that culture. So it is with the 1901 opera Rusalka by Antonin Dvorak: as thoroughly Czech as you could wish, but recognizably the same story as the one Hans Christian Andersen penned in Denmark.

And the same tale can be retold in different ways. In this class, we will sample three different productions of Dvorak's opera. First, 2 minutes of the old Otto Schenk production at the Met, an old-fashioned spectacle with romantic painted scenery. Then 12 minutes of a 2011 production in Munich by Martin Kusej, who rips a notorious sex-abuse case from recent newspapers to create something that begins lurid, turns surreal, and ends in the chill of total insanity. Finally, 32 minutes from the most brilliant production of all, staged in Paris in 2009 by Robert Carsen, who treats the subject as a fascinating affair of mirrors and broken symmetry. rb.

 
The script, videos, and images will be posted immediately after class.