Jaroslav Kvapil wrote the libretto[2] on Karel Jaromír Erben's and Božena Němcová's fairy tales.

[3] The most popular excerpt from Rusalka is the soprano aria, the "Song to the Moon" ("Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém") for the title character in act 1, which is often performed in concert and recorded separately.

He thus had direct experience of a wide range of operas by Mozart, Weber, Rossini, Lortzing, Wagner, Verdi as well as his compatriot Smetana.

The plot contains elements which also appear in The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen and in Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué,[2] and has been described as a "sad, modern fairy tale", in a similar vein to his previous play, Princessa Pampeliška.

[5] Coming after his four symphonic poems inspired by the folk-ballads of Erben of 1896–97, Rusalka may be viewed as the culmination of Dvořák's exploration of a "wide variety of drama-creating musical techniques".

[9] The first professional performances were at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1959; a 1983 production by English National Opera was filmed and revived several times.

Ježibaba tells Rusalka that, if she becomes human, she will lose the power of speech and immortality; moreover, if she does not find love with the prince, he will die and she will be eternally damned.

The prince, hunting a white doe, finds Rusalka, embraces her, and leads her away, as her father and sisters lament.

The gamekeeper and the kitchen boy are worried about the deteriorating condition of the prince, and go to the lake in order to get rid of Rusalka.

[8] His word-setting is expressive while allowing for nationally inflected passages, and Grove judges that the work shows the composer at the height of his maturity.

[5] He uses established theatrical devices – dance sections, comedy (Gamekeeper and Turnspit) and pictorial musical depiction of nature (forest and lake).

[1] Rodney Milnes (who provided the translation for an ENO production) admired the "wealth of melodic patterns that are dramatic in themselves and its shimmering orchestration".