BARTON ENJOYS PLAYING TRULY EVIL WITCH
New York: Poor Rusalka! The water nymph heroine of Antonin Dvorak’s bestknown opera never stands a chance against the witch Jezibaba — especially as played to the hilt by the powerhouse mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. “She’s one of the few characters I've encountered who is truly evil,” Barton said in an interview at the Metropolitan Opera, where she is performing in the new Mary Zimmerman production. “I don't really find redeeming qualities. But I do find interesting qualities.” Rusalka, starring soprano Kristine Opolais in the title role, will be broadcast live in HD to movie theaters on Saturday. The opera, a variation on The Little Mermaid without the Disney happy ending, tells of Rusalka’s longing to become human. Jezibaba agrees to engineer the transformation but warns she will be unable to speak and that if she fails at finding true love, she will be damned and the object of her affections will die. When Jezibaba first appears, clothed like a Victorian matron with an ominous spiderweb pattern on her dress, “shes got the mask on, saying yes, of course I'll help you, but you have to agree to these impossible terms,” Barton said. Throughout, Barton matches her prodigious vocal abilities from high notes to low (including a blood-curdling cackle for her final exit) with a restless physicality that perfectly conveys Jezibaba's diabolical machinations. Critic James Jorden wrote in the New York Observer that “lurching, heaving and writhing nonstop, she looked as if she might any moment explode out of sheer malevolence.” In the U.S, it will be repeated today. —