OPERA: Right but romantic
The Cunning Little Vixen, Royal Academy Opera
The Cunning Little Vixen, Royal Academy Opera, 26th March 2003
This was my first visit to the Jack Lyon Theatre at the Royal Academy of Music, but if this excellent production of Janacek’s Vixen is typical of the standards reached by the Academy’s students, it will certainly not be the last, even though there were two major external advantages contributing to the success. The first of course was Janacek’s score and unique conception. The second was the presence, on the conductor’s podium, of that great advocate of Janacek, Sir Charles Mackerras.
Although Vixen has had successful London productions both at the ENO and Covent Garden, I have always thought of it as best-suited to a more intimate stage. Probably I am prejudiced in this respect from having first seen it at the tiny theatre in Ostrava, in Northern Moravia. The town, basically a gigantic steelworks built over coal-mines, is almost the direct negative of the setting of the opera; the orchestra on that occasion was virtually a chamber-ensemble of a couple of dozen; the chorus and ‘supporting’ animals were nearly all local schoolchildren. But they played and sang like angels in the accents and melodies they shared with the composer.
Indeed Janacek died in the town in 1928, having caught pneumonia whilst searching for the son of his infatuation, Kamila Stösslová, who had wandered off in the nearby forest. Vixen is a tribute to Janacek’s native Moravia but also to his late-blooming love for Kamila, who is present in the character of the Vixen herself and the offstage, lusted-after, gipsy girl Terinka – as she is in many of his later works, including the string quartets and The Diary of One who Disappeared, in which a young farmer throws up everything for a gipsy girl. In 1923, when Janacek completed the opera, he was nearly eighty and Kamila was 42; running off with her was never really an option, but she was indubitably the Eternal Feminine who drew him on throughout his final masterpieces.
Vixen is unique in opera, and almost unparalleled in art, in showing human life as incidental to the natural cycle, rather than vice versa. Janacek adapted the story-line and created the libretto based on a series of what appear to have been some William Boot-like sketches in a Brno newspaper. The human figures, if they have occasional respite at the ale-house or in sleep, are all limited, frustrated, unable to live and be satisfied. Andrew Clarke, in the small but telling part of the Schoolmaster – perhaps the role with which Janacek himself most identified – sang and expressed this bitterness eloquently. The Forester – magnificently rendered by Rodney Clarke – who captures, then loses and fruitlessly pursues the vixen – is perhaps the only one with a broader vision, and is rewarded for this by his vision of continuity in the final scene when the child of the dead Vixen, and the grandchild of the Frog who entertained him in the first scene, pass before him.
The animals however plunge into life and death with a full acceptance of the risks and an innocent and greedy enjoyment of its rewards. Only the Forester’s dog Lapak (a dachshund I think in the original, but maybe Sofia Flodin was too tall for that, so has become a dalmatian), caught between two worlds, cannot participate as they do. Jenny Ohlson as Sharpears the Vixen was thoroughly winning, both in voice and personality. My adviser on the Czech language (Mrs. Buchler) tells me that the ‘bystrouska’ of the opera’s title is perhaps better rendered as ‘cute’ (in the American sense, i.e. attractive and clever) rather than ‘cunning’ which has an overtone of evil slyness. I can testify that Ms. Ohlson was cute even when slaughtering the five steatopygous hens which were foolish enough to succumb to her stratagems. And she and the Fox (Delphine Gillot) were equally winning in their passionate love duet. We were all stricken when the lusty drunken poacher (Seung-Wook Seong – this is a very multi-cultural forest) shot her; and were enthralled when, after a shocked silence, the five note motif which might have developed into her threnody becomes instead a launch for music telling us unmistakably of new life and growth.
Here as elsewhere Sir Charles guided the exquisite score with both command and sensitivity. After a slightly uncertain start, the orchestra soon rose to render convincingly the tapestry of Moravian dance and song embedded in each scene. Sir Charles is presently only a few years younger that Janacek when he wrote Vixen, and the evening was proof that, like the composer, he is still developing and inspiring. (By the way, Sir Charles is also a descendant of the first fatality in the southern hemisphere caused by a tram – not many people know that). My further compliments to all participants I have not named, and especially to those responsible for the make-up. The cast I saw and heard is one of two; but I have every confidence, on this showing, that the alternative team will be as gratifying to its audiences.
What a contrast this opera is to its near-contemporary, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck! There, society has become de-naturized; a lake is to drown in, a hedgehog becomes a severed head, the moon is the colour of blood. In its final scene, an orphan with no support from his natural community faces a blank, threatening future. In Vixen, the orphan of Sharpears, like her mother, has no need of the ‘civilization’ of the Forester, but can confidently rely on her native wit and the providence of her environment. Street-smart money is on the cold clarity and world-weariness of Berg; but somehow the romantic response of Janacek seems, paradoxically, both less evasive and braver. Even a townie curmudgeon like myself feels braced for a stroll in the greenery.
Allen Buchler, March 27, 2003 02:30 AM