The Cunning Little Vixen review – a lively reflection on life, death and our relationship to nature

Spoiler alert. The cute, foxy, furry heroine gets shot in Act III. No getting around it. The “not so cunning little vixen after all” drops like a stone behind a log pile after receiving both barrels from the poacher, Harašta. And that’s it. Well, almost.

No fuss. No last death-den prolongation aria, like Puccini’s heroines who expire over aeons. That is unless they’re jumping off battlements. Even then, they plunge after a pause and a salutary farewell to a cruel world. 

Leoš Janáček did not muck about. And there is a point to our vixen’s no-frills farewell, clearly understood by English National Opera (ENO), but often missed in other productions. Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen is an unsentimental reflection on the turning cycle of life. The death of the endearing creature may be heart-stopping. But it is inevitable and even casual. This is the nature of folklife. And Moravian folk culture is at the heart of this opera. 

Sometimes it’s done differently. For instance, in another excellent 2009 production by Opéra national de Paris, Opéra Bastille, from Don Kent, an accomplished film and now opera director, currently available on EuroArtsChannel.

The vixen is shot and left in full view, askew a railway line. It’s a shocking, powerful moment, but the point of the cycle is that the action swiftly overtakes a sudden demise. No crying over spilt vixens, please. Stop boo-hooing over that cuddly corpse. Here comes the next generation! Leaving Sharp Ears, the vixen in total view is, well, preoccupying.

Opéra national’s Vixen is visually stunning. Ellena Tsallagova, who sings the vixen, is unbelievably engaging. A Russian coloratura soprano with an acting ability matching her voice, she is currently singing Vixen again, for Staatsoper, Munich — a typical Barrie Kosky freak-out production.

These vixens are getting everywhere. And it’s not surprising, as this late offering from Janáček’s pen has been carelessly overlooked and deserves attention.

Back to the Coliseum. ENO premiered the opera in London in 1961, and this new production is as sharp-eyed to the composer’s meaning as his vixen heroin is sharp-eared.

Here’s the potted-version plot. We follow Sharp Ears, a vixen captured by a forester. Held for years as a pet, she manages to escape, making a new life for herself in the forest. 

After meeting a fox, she marries and has a family, only to fatally cross paths with a poacher after mocking his traps. The forester is haunted by the vixen; he recalls his youth, the beauty of nature and the continuous cycle of life and death.

The full synopsis can be found here for readers unfamiliar with the work.

The opera features a woodland cornucopia of delightful flora and fauna. It is too easy to ratchet up the appeal of the concerned mushrooms, bulgy-eyed frog, fluffy chickens, strutting rooster, happy doggie, buzzy multicoloured insects and even the grumpy badger to the “aw, shucks” level of a children’s pantomime outing. 

ENO has avoided that tempting trap. Attention to detail abounds in this production, through movement, set design and costumes, which, inevitably in an animal-dominated cast, often verge on the ludicrous. 

Antonia Day, the costume supervisor, strays close to the cliff edge of sanity, especially with her humungous, red-crested rooster, but never falls off.

The set is designed by Tom Scutt. He has more theatre than opera credits under his belt, but plenty of both — including ENO’s Wozzeck — and his association with Donmar Warehouse in London is reflected in this Vixen.

The whole thing is “warehousey”. For starters, the backstage area is unadorned. All the tech stuff, switches, lifts, ropes, walkways, fire exit signs are on view. Why? Because Scutt is working with the largest stage in London, too big for this intimate opera, and creating a set within that space to focus the audience’s eye. 

The action is confined within and around piles of logs, stacked in wheeled pallets as in an industrial lumber yard. At the start, one log is raised high into the fly towers and becomes a spool for an unfolding roll of fabric, painted in stunning abstract style by Anya Allin, charting the passing of time from the spring of life to the setting sun.  

Smaller fabric spools are released from time to time. The eye of the audience is focused on the action within these parameters. The unwanted surplus space just melts away. Members of the cast — mostly toadstools — move the wheeled log piles around to change scene so there is no clunky dislocation of the action.

Janáček’s musical style presents a particular challenge to ENO. Acres of Mittel-Europa forest have been sacrificed to the writers of learned theses on the composer’s lyrical use of the Czech language. Intonation and melody must meld as one. 

“According to my principles of composition, where tune is created by the word, the whole melody depends thus upon the sentence. Of course, there are some composers who can fit up any kind of text with one of their ready-made tunes. That I simply cannot do”, said Janáček in 1916. 

In case you missed it, that was two fingers to Verdi and Puccini. 

Believe me, there are screeds of academic works on the subject, diving into the bowels and vowels of the Czech language and their incorporation into Janáček’s notation and phrasing. These are mostly at the hands of opera’s morticians. 

The late John Tyrell, Janáček tyro, disembowelled the point in a four-page article in an August 1970 edition of The Musical Times.

My puerile precis of the great man’s thesis: if the tune follows the inflexion of language, the implication must be that translation brings the whole construct tumbling down.  

So, does ENO’s performance in English break the spell Janáček is trying to weave? No, it doesn’t. 

I searched the programme in vain to discover who was responsible for the libretto translation, but whoever you are, please take your bow. There was no noticeable clunkiness to be heard. The surtitles were faithful to the sung word, and artful use was made of humorous colloquialisms.

Pin sharp attention to detail is what distinguishes this ENO production. Director, Jamie Manton, keeps the action lively, adding some crafty humour. In the time span, when the vixen is in captivity in the home of the forester and his drudgy wife, they are to be seen slumped in front of a TV, presumably soaking in soaps. 

Sally Matthews, soprano, is one of those performers who make you glad you’re interested in opera. Her rich voice comes with an artful acting ability that makes her the go-to vixen. If she sees what I mean. 

Paired with soprano Pumera Matshikiza, a South African with a glittering career ahead of her, the couple conveyed a spell-binding relationship that reaches from first infatuation to the hysterical moment when Sharp Ears can’t really remember how many cubs they’ve had. Still, the couple is looking forward to May, when they will mate again.

But, May never comes. 

The forester is the fatal intersection point of the animal and human kingdoms. Baritone, Lester Lynch brought conviction and pathos to the role. Conflicted between a desire to control the cunning vixen and admiration for her sheer spunk and ingenuity, his changing outlook is the deep river course of this opera. 

A particularly loud shout-out for the use of the children’s chorus, performing the roles of smaller animals, varied species of fungi and the vixen’s copious litter. They came to the stage via ENO’s Opera Squad secondary schools and the ENO Youth Programme. 

It is rewarding to see this “behind the scenes” effort flowering onstage, even though there may have been more little creatures around than Janáček originally conceived.

Maestro, Martyn Brabbins, herded the ENO orchestra in the pit. My neighbour in the stalls thought his interpretation lacked “oomph”. I politely disagreed. 

And here’s yet another detail, but an important one. ENO publishes the best programmes of any house I have visited recently. They avoid psycho drivel. Nuts and bolts – cast list and synopsis are crisp.

Then we dive deeper. A conversation with director Jamie Manton is followed by A Merry Thing with a Sad End, an unfussy exploration of the history of the work and the composer.

Then comes a selection of fascinating original documents and letters about the composer’s life at the time of composition selected by Philip Reed, a freelance musician and writer who always shapes an interesting angle. 

Unlike the usual post-theatre clutter, tossed away with the empty ice-cream tubs, these programmes are reference works to keep. 

Vixen was scheduled to open last Friday, but storm Dudley, or Eunice, or storm whatever, cancelled proceedings and within minutes, the super-efficient ENO box office had rescheduled my ticket for the Sunday matinee. No, “Your call is important to us, please hang on for three years”.  

The vixen dead, the up-and-coming generation thrust to the fore, the ageing forester reflecting on mankind’s relationship with the animal kingdom, he stretches a hand to scroll the hanging fabric on, past the setting sun.

The artwork on the canvas stutters to blank, then the roll of fabric, exhausted, falls to the floor. The forester trudges wearily off with it towards an open, white-lit door opening backstage.

The next generation has taken over. Thank you, ENO, not only for the detail but an insightful production and a truly uplifting afternoon.