Buffeted by the storm, Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen was blown from Friday night’s cancelled premiere to a Sunday afternoon opening – but she emerged fresh and strong in this lively updating by the English National Opera and director Jamie Manton.
The natural world, and our treatment of its creatures, is at the heart of this unusual 1924 work, which tells the story of a forester in a Czech village who captures and keeps a vixen cub; we follow her as she escapes and grows up, only to be shot by another villager. Janáček’s score duly teems with the sounds of the forest and the noises of the countryside. Not that there is much pleasant greenery glimpsed in this radical envisioning by designer Tom Scutt, who sets the opera on the bare outline of the Coliseum stage and fills it, rather menacingly, with industrial pallets and logs.
When set in a natural arcadia, The Cunning Little Vixen can often seem twee and comfortable, but here the emphasis is on the weakness of the humans, and the adversity faced by the young animals. Time passes, symbolised by a huge descending banner, as nature regenerates – but not before the Vixen dies, in a shocking moment which removes any idea that this is a simple tale. This was Janáček’s own addition to the Brno newspaper cartoon-strip story that inspired the piece. He said he wanted to create “a merry thing with a sad end”, making the Forester’s interactions with nature a subtle mixture of pleasure and pain.
One of Manton’s bright ideas is to portray the Vixen with three actors at different ages (the same device is used for the Dragonfly and Forester). Sally Matthews sings her with strength, though she has not yet inhabited the vividness of the character, who comes across as a little bland, nor is the text quite clear. There is more vitality from Pumeza Matshikiza as her devoted Fox, projecting off the stage with great conviction. Some ENO stalwarts play the villagers, with Alan Oke as the Schoolmaster and Clive Bayley as the Priest, doubling the roles of Mosquito and Badger respectively, and their way with the text is scrupulously clear, their characters sardonically drawn.
ENO has a long history with this opera – indeed its predecessor, Sadler’s Wells Opera, gave the first performances in Britain – so it’s only right that the company should lead the way in giving it a contemporary edge. And as the flavour of the moment is participation, it was quite something to see 20 children from local Westminster primary schools as the lively fox-cubs, singing splendidly and providing small but vital animal parts, of which Robert Berry-Roe as a stuttering frog won the prize. A total success, too, was the Forester of Lester Lynch, attracted to the Vixen from the first moment, singing to nature with glorious passion in the final act.
A certain amount in this production needs tidying up on stage (the departure of the Vixen after her death is oddly handled), but the focus will doubtless improve as the storms abate. In the end, Janáček’s impact relies on the precision and clarity of the orchestral sounds, and Martyn Brabbins secured transparently expressive playing from the ENO Orchestra, which powers the show. This is a worthy reinvention of one of the last century’s most lovable operas.
Until March 1. Tickets: 020 7845 9300; eno.org
