The Stage

The Cunning Little Vixen

Published Monday 22 March 2010 at 09:50 by George Hall

Janacek’s opera paralleling the animal world of the forest with the human world of the village returns under the baton of Sir Charles Mackerras, the composer’s leading interpreter.

Gerald Thompson (Dachshund) and Emma Matthews (Vixen Sharp-Ears) in The Cunning Little Vixen at the Royal Opera House Photo: Tristram Kenton

Though there are moments of orchestral untidiness, and occasionally more momentum is needed, the music receives its due in Mackerras’s refined yet ebullient selection of orchestral colours.

Some fuzziness has crept into Bill Bryden’s staging, now in its third revival. William Dudley’s designs offer mechanistic imagery blended with Disney-like cutesiness. The real magic of the natural world as presented in Janacek’s score is only intermittently realised. The inn scenes, full of a sense of nostalgia, loss and human disappointment, need some visual tightening.

But there are some vital performances, especially from Emma Matthews’ lively Vixen, with Elisabeth Meister stepping up on the first night as cover for the Fox to present it with energy and definition. Christopher Maltman looks on the young side for the Forester, whose sympathy for the woodland creatures rises to a radiant moment of spiritual unity with them at the close.

Jeremy White is game as the Badger, though the crucial moment when he is turned out of his home by the Vixen goes for little. Robin Leggate makes the Schoolmaster’s melancholy painfully real. As the villain of the piece, the poacher Harasta, Matthew Rose is big and bold but not quite nasty enough. Overall, there’s a lack of focus to set against considerable merits.