In 1983, David Pountney and Stefanos Lazaridis created a landmark production of Rusalka for the ENO, cementing Antonín Dvořák’s opera in the Western canon.

It’s taken 40 years for another director to match Pountney’s genius and Sarah Giles was the one to do it. And how!

Gone are the Freudian overtones, and in their place a cautionary tale that succeeds where so many others have failed, delivering a fable that has taught generations of Czech children to be careful what they wish for.

Ashlyn Tymms as Ježibaba and Nicole Car as Rusalka in Opera Australia’s Rusalka. Photo © Carlita Sari

In this production for the Opera Conference, which opened in Perth last year, Giles eschews the excesses of Regietheater and Disneyesque pictorialism that followed Pountney, in favour of something that is at once universal yet utterly Slavic – so much so, one could say Giles and her creative team have beaten the Czechs at their own game.

It’s no mean feat, and as often happens with the holiest of holies, it takes someone looking from the outside in to really appreciate what’s needed – a bit like the witch Ježibaba here.

Giles succinctly conveys...