A unique man vs. wild tale
"The Cunning Little Vixen" (1924) was the second of four great operas that poured out of Czech composer Leos Janacek around the age of 70. Basing it on newspaper serials, themselves inspired by a series of older published drawings, Janacek adapted the libretto, adding the death of the vixen to the third act.
"The Cunning Little Vixen" (1924) was the second of four great operas that poured out of Czech composer Leos Janacek around the age of 70. Basing it on newspaper serials, themselves inspired by a series of older published drawings, Janacek adapted the libretto, adding the death of the vixen to the third act.
It recounts a tale of a shrewd vixen, in a world of harmony and beauty, who is captured by the Gamekeeper, only to escape, marry a fox and be killed by a lovelorn hunter. The humans in the story are lonely men searching for some sense of undefined peace, and their sketchy lives negatively parallel the lives of the animals in a despairing quest for meaning.
The music is exquisite, rhythmic and buoyant and brimming with folk melodies, requiring dancing by the artists singing the parts of the many animals. It's a remarkable, unique vision unlike anything else in opera, except for Ravel's fairy tale "L'Enfant et Les Sortileges."
- Tom DiNardo