Twenty minutes later, the sonorous opening notes of “Song to the Moon” wash over me as I sit gazing indifferently down at the opera below.
The orchestra pit below the stage is filled with musicians, all of them playing to an invisible, non-existent audience while above them a beautiful young soprano lounges mournfully beneath a glittering silver tree. She’s playing the doomed water nymph, Rusalka, and is singing her heart out with soulful sincerity and stirring emotion, as though she were performing in front of a packed audience at the real Paris Opera House - not this empty underground replica of it.
This is a strange choice for tonight’s entertainment. Antonín Dvořák’s opera is based on an ancient fable from Slavic folklore, telling the tragic story of a water spirit who falls in love
