Leoš Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen is the seventh offering from the Moravian composer. Janáček, while never abandoning his long term interests in folk music and declamatory-style writing, turned after a life of much unrest and complexity to a theme of apparent simplicity, shrouding much more complex issues: a fairy tale. Although meant and made for children, fairy tales are anything but simplistic. They are mythology for children, asking deep questions about life, death, love and purpose in a way that is appealing and accessible for little ones. And though Disney has put more sheen to these dark stories and gentrified them to the point of being almost too easy to swallow, even they cannot rid the stories completely of evil stepmothers, poisoned apples, witches baking children in ovens or wolves stalking young ladies wearing telling red capes.
In Otto Schenk’s self-proclaimed final directorial effort at the Staatsoper after a career in the house spanning half a century, he has done a brilliant job of reflecting the work as conceived. Schenk remains true to the beautiful, childlike themes of the fairy tale and lets the darker elements speak (and shock) for themselves. Thank the heavens! Just as the themes of coming into womanhood, fear and love and malevolence are all beautifully contained in the apparently simple tale, a lesser talent than Swedish director Ingmar Bergman would completely ruin the aesthetic by making the story anything more than it is inherently. There are other ways of laying out this opera and underlining its deeper, hidden complexities, but the fact is, it stands alone absolutely effectively without any extra muddying of the psychological waters.
Schenk’s production, effectively realized by a strong ensemble of singers and the breathtakingly magical costume and set design by Amra Buchbinder is, however, anything but simplistic and old-fashioned. It is adorable, but also highly detailed and textured, bringing to mind (and thoroughly trumping) the best parts of The Magic Flute première from earlier this season.
From the trees which open the work, through the scores of insects, reptiles and mammals that dance, twitch, flutter, hop and chirp throughout (bravo, chorus children and their magnificent direction: more adorable and thoughtfully developed beetles, fox cubs, frogs, dragonflies, rabbits etc. are not to be found, even in Disney), to the contagiously mischievous little vixen herself (beautifully portrayed by Chen Reiss) this was thoughtfully directed and realized. The detail in the leaves of the trees, the sensitivity to lighting (Emmerich Steigberger), the extravagance of the owls’ feathers, the gloss of the beetles, the joy with which the animals somersaulted their way down mossy hills, and the kid-friendly lovemaking of foxes- everything felt like what fairy tales should be. Even the death of the vixen, though appropriately shocking and sad, was not a drawn-out tragedy as sometimes depicted. Instead, as in the best fairy tales, the story ends on a note of hope. The circle of life keeps turning and despair breeds new meaning. A little frog hops into the hunter’s lap, as did his grandfather before him, leading him to a fox cub that reminds him of his fallen vixen. He takes it home, promising to do things better this time.