HOME-STRETCH SPRINT NEEDED
SANTA FE, NM—-Dvorak’s “Rusalka,” all about opera’s most famous water nymph, is too striking a fairy-tale drama to dissolve into a meandering finale. The composer with the rich romantic patina clearly had a far finer musical instinct than a theatrical one. At the risk of heresy, I’d propose engaging some current rewriter master (like formerly Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel or Alfano) to revise and tighten up the dawdling ending of an otherwise sterling opera-tragedy. In other regards, a reprise of this 1901…