Dated and wasteful: Rusalka, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed

Careful what you wish for. There can be no definitive way to stage an opera, and it’s the critic’s duty to keep an open mind. Still, we’ve all occasionally gazed at a white cube that represents an Alpine meadow, or watched a chivalric hero slouch across the stage in tracksuit bottoms, and felt our hearts slump. Then you pitch up at the Royal Opera House’s new production of Dvorak’s Rusalka and it’s as if some mischievous sprite has magicked you straight back to 1960.

The directors are also credited as ‘creators’ (back in your box, composer and librettist!)

At first, you don’t suspect much. It’s actually rather enchanting: deep forest darkness and an aerial dancer in rippling, shimmering robes, drifting into the light in an exquisitely realised swimming effect. Semyon Bychkov is in the pit, unfolding Dvorak’s prelude with a quiet command that leaves ample space for mystery. But then the lights go up and it sinks like a stone, visually at least. There are big green fake weeds and dancers scampering back and forth dressed as pond plants, arms curving wavily to indicate water. I swear I’m not making this up.

Many opera-goers, of course, will sigh with relief. It’s just not what you expect when the directors – there are two of them, Natalie Abrahami and Ann Yee – are also credited as ‘creators’ (back in your box, composer and librettist!) of a ‘poetic, contemporary new staging’. In Act Two, we’re in a perfume advert – a luxury hotel has been built over the woodland pool – and in Act Three we’re down with the bottom-feeders amid brightly coloured litter which is, we can agree, a bad thing. That seems to be the contemporary message: nothing, in other words, that The Wombles weren’t singing about five decades ago. The whole production is sustainable, apparently, and the programme has been printed with vegetable-based inks, so you can boil it for soup if the salad crisis intensifies.