THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN (Janáček) Paris 2008 Elena Tsallagova, Jukka Rasilainen, David Kuebler

THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN by Leos Janáček
Palais Garnier, Opera de Paris, France
November 2008

CAST

Elena Tsallagova — The Vixen

Jukka Rasilainen — The Forester

Michèle Lagrange — The Forester’s Wife

David Kuebler — The Schoolmaster

Roland Bracht — The Parson

Paul Gay — Harašta

Hannah Esther Minutillo — The Fox
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Conductor: Dennis Russell Davies
Orchestre du Théâtre National de l’Opéra de Paris
Chœurs du Théâtre National de l’Opéra de Paris
Alessandro di Stefano — Chorus master
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André Engel — Stage director

Nicky Rieti — Set designer

Elizabeth Neumuller — Costumes designer

André Diot — Lighting
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The Cunning Little Vixen (original title Příhody lišky Bystroušky or Tales of Vixen Sharp-Ears in English) is a three-act Czech-language opera by Leoš Janáček completed in 1923 to a libretto the composer himself adapted from a novella by Rudolf Těsnohlídek.

The opera’s libretto was adapted by the composer from a 1920 serialized novella, Liška Bystrouška, by Rudolf Těsnohlídek, which was first published in the newspaper Lidové noviny (with illustrations by Stanislav Lolek). For the title of the opera, Příhody means tales; lišky is the genitive of vixen. Bystroušky, still genitive, is the pun sharp, having the double meaning of pointed, like fox ears, and clever. The opera first became familiar outside Czechoslovakia in a 1927 German adaptation by Max Brod who provided the new name Das schlaue Füchslein, by which Germans still know it and which in English means The Cunning Little Vixen.

Synopsis

Act 1
In the forest, the animals and insects are playing and dancing. The forester enters and lies down against a tree for a nap. A curious vixen cub (often sung by a young girl), inquisitively chases a frog right into the lap of the surprised forester who forcibly takes the vixen home as a pet. Time passes (in the form of an orchestral interlude) and we see the vixen, now grown up into a young adult (now a soprano) tied up in the forester’s yard with the conservative old dachshund. Fed up with life in confinement, the vixen chews through her rope, attacks the rooster and hen, kills the other chickens, jumps over the fence and runs off to freedom.

Act 2
The vixen takes over a badger’s home and kicks him out. At the inn, the parson, the forester, and the schoolmaster drink and talk about their mutual infatuation with the gypsy girl Terynka. The drunken schoolmaster leaves the inn and mistakes a sunflower behind which the vixen is hiding for Terynka, professing his devotion to her. The forester, also on his way home, sees the vixen and fires two shots at her, sending her running. Later, the vixen, coming into her adulthood, meets a charming male fox (sung by a woman), and they retire to the badger’s home. An unexpected pregnancy and a forest full of gossipy creatures necessitate their marriage.

Act 3
The poacher Harašta is engaged to Terynka and is out hunting in preparation for their marriage. He sets a fox trap, which the numerous fox and vixen cubs mock. Harašta, watching from a distance, shoots and kills the vixen, sending her children running. At Harašta’s wedding, the forester sees the vixen’s fur, which Harašta gave to Terynka as a wedding present, and flees to the forest to reflect. He returns to the place where he met the vixen, and sits at the tree, grieving the loss of both the vixen and Terynka. His grief grows until, just as in the beginning of the opera, a frog unexpectedly jumps in his lap, the grandson of the one who did so in Act 1. This reassurance of the cycle of death bringing new life gives his heart a deep peace.

Quoted from Wikipedia