Rusalka

A Rusalka is a water nymph, a female spirit in Slavic mythology and folklore. The term is commonly translated from Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian as "mermaid".

Origin and appearance

According to Vladimir Propp, the original "rusalka" was an appellation used by Pagan Slavic tribes, who linked them with fertility and did not consider rusalki evil before the nineteenth century. They came out of the water in the spring to transfer life-giving moisture to the fields and thus helped nurture the crops.

In nineteenth century versions, a rusalka is an unquiet, dangerous being who is no longer alive, associated with the unclean spirit. According to Dmitry Zelenin, young women, who either committed suicide by drowning due to an unhappy marriage (they might have been jilted by their lovers or abused and harassed by their much older husbands), or who were violently drowned against their will (especially after becoming pregnant with unwanted children), must live out their designated time on earth as rusalki. However, the initial Slavic lore suggests that not all rusalki occurrences were linked with death from water, and, as the name suggests, red-haired women often aroused suspicion in traditional Russian societies as being bewitched, a connotation that might have come with the Orthodox faith sometime around late 15th century.

Rusalka (opera)

Rusalka (pronounced [ruˈsalka]), Op. 114, is an opera ('lyric fairy tale') by Antonín Dvořák. The Czech libretto was written by the poet Jaroslav Kvapil (1868–1950) based on the fairy tales of Karel Jaromír Erben and Božena Němcová. Rusalka is one of the most successful Czech operas, and represents a cornerstone of the repertoire of Czech opera houses. A Rusalka is a water sprite from Slavic mythology, usually inhabiting a lake or river.

Dvořák had played viola for many years in pit orchestras in Prague (Estates Theatre from 1857 until 1859 while a student, then from 1862 until 1871 at the Provisional Theatre). He thus had direct experience of a wide range of operas by Mozart, Weber, Rossini, Lortzing, Verdi, Wagner and Smetana. Rusalka was the ninth opera Dvořák composed.

For many years unfamiliarity with Dvořák's operas outside Czechoslovakia helped reinforce a perception that composition of operas was a marginal activity, and that despite the beauty of its melodies and orchestral timbres Rusalka was not a central part of his output or of international lyric theatre. In recent years it has been performed more regularly by major opera companies. In the five seasons from 2008 to 2013 it was performed by opera companies worldwide far more than all of Dvořák's other operas combined.

Russian monitor Rusalka

Rusalka (Russian: Русалка, Mermaid), was one of two Charodeika-class monitors built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1860s. She served for her entire career with the Baltic Fleet. Aside from hitting an uncharted rock not long after she was completed in 1869, she had an uneventful career. Rusalka sank in a storm in 1893 with the loss of all hands in the Gulf of Finland. A memorial was built in Reval (modern Tallinn) to commemorate her loss almost a decade later. Her wreck was rediscovered in 2003, bow-down in the mud, which has prompted a new theory regarding her loss.

Design and description

Rusalka was 206 feet (62.8 m) long at the waterline. She had a beam of 42 feet (12.8 m) and a maximum draft of 12 feet 7 inches (3.8 m). The ship was designed to displace 1,882 long tons (1,912 t), but turned out to be overweight and actually displaced 2,100 long tons (2,100 t). Her crew numbered 13 officers and 171 crewmen in 1877.

The ship had two simple horizontal direct-acting steam engines, each driving a single propeller. The engines were designed to produce a total of 900 indicated horsepower (670 kW) using steam provided by two coal-fired rectangular fire-tube boilers, but only achieved 705 ihp (526 kW) and a speed of approximately 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph) during her sea trials. She carried a maximum of 250 long tons (254 t) of coal for her boilers.