248 Rusalka
Dvořák

Down 11, to its lowest ever chart position. 1st of 5 entries for Dvořák this year.

Dvořák wrote Rusalka, his penultimate opera, at the age of sixty, with just three years left to live. He had lost none of his compositional powers, though; it proved his biggest operatic hit. It's based on the folk tale of Undine, the water nymph (from the latin unda, meaning wave) although, by the time Dvořák offered up his music, Hans Christian Andersen's 'The little Mermaid' was already sixty-five years old, so there is the odd doff of the cap to this version, too. The Song to the Moon remains the shining-hit aria of the whole work.

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