I once heard this as a comment on The Cunning Little Vixen, which I went to see at the Wales Millennium Centre. (For some reason Welsh National Opera thinks that Bristol audiences can’t handle Janáček and don’t bring their productions of his operas to the Hippodrome).
We have at least Vixen (and Fox), Badger and Jay visiting our back garden. Our local Sharpears steals dog toys from the neigbours and brings them under a large tree there for her cubs to play with. She (or Fox) has also somehow worked out how to swing the ‘lockable’ handle on the Council-issued food waste container up and over to get at the contents, and is now thwarted by a double layer of containers we call the ‘fox box’.
The opera’s cast, led by Aoife Miskelly in the title role, were mostly young up-and-coming singers, and were required to show considerable athleticism. I’m not very familiar with this score but couldn’t fault the singing and playing (Tomáš Hanus conducted). This production has been around since 1980 and has the Pountney trademark umbrellas, here impersonating flowers. Badger’s/Sharpears’ den must now remind quite a lot of us of the Teletubby house.
Unlike previous stagings of this production, this one was sung in Czech, thereby preserving the composer’s skilful word-setting. The libretto has been tweaked a bit by Jiri Zahrádka and I would be interested to know how extensive this is and why it was done. Perhaps some politically incorrect humour has gone, or maybe an attempt to make it more topical? Nevertheless, it steers the fine line between allowing the animals enough human emotions and behaviour for us to empathise with them, while not disregarding the gulf between the human and animal worlds, with the latter’s brief lives and continual struggle for survival. (A convenient piece of artistic licence is that sometimes the humans and animals understand one another’s speech and sometimes not. How does the Forester come to know Sharpears’ name?)
WNO is following this with The Makropoulos Case next season and I don’t intend to miss that even if it means another trip to Cardiff.
Some reviews: