“Spring is here at last!” exclaims an ecstatically enlightened Forester as he marvels at the renewing power of Nature in an outpouring of pantheistic wonder at the close of The Cunning Little Vixen. Alas, this most glorious of operatic culminations is completely botched in Jamie Manton’s production. On opening night, as the curtain fell all too slowly, no-one on stage, and probably not many in the audience, seemed to know what was going on.
By this time, Janáček’s masterpiece had become inextricably tangled in Manton’s web of half-baked ideas and agendas. Created for English National Opera, the 2022 staging seems to have taken its cue not from the transcendent ending but from the depressive utterances of the innkeeper’s wife a few minutes earlier, concerning unhappiness and loneliness, accompanied by villagers loping off the stage like zombies. Indeed, it seems that for Manton it is death rather than affirmation of life that dominates the entire opera. The stage – flat and featureless, in absolute contrast to the music – is cluttered with piles of logs, and with superfluous characters dressed in black sou’westers and wellingtons, who seem to have wandered in from Peter Grimes: harbingers of death, or “time-keepers”, apparently.
Manton also brings in alter-egos each for the Vixen and the Forester. The young vixen gets a not-so-young vixen Doppelgänger, who seems not to know why they are there. They sit idly near the adult Vixen as she is (supposed to be) dreaming of her freedom – another should-be-spine-tingling episode that went for nothing – and much later they traipse after her as she miraculously recovers from being shot dead and walks off through the rear stage door. Conveniently carrying its luminous Exit sign, this door is also the Forester’s fate, after he has briefly disported with his younger and even younger selves. The audience has no clue as to who these extras are, but at least they don’t clutter the stage as pointlessly as the ‘men in black’.
With all this doom and gloom, we might expect the omnipresent unfurling scroll hanging from one of the many logs, to provide some splashes of colour. Alas not, unless it was that the theatre’s printer had run out of colour ink. The illustrations, hit-and-miss in their creative point, are mainly grey-scale, with a few token orange splashes.
Admittedly the animal characters brought some colour and life to the stage, albeit sporadically and chaotically. Manton’s big idea seems to be that the forest has been gutted by human beings, but that Nature finds a way to return – hence a plethora of dragonflies to represent resilience and some giant perambulating mushrooms.
The general clutter, both physically and conceptually, renders much of the action and characterisation unconvincing, despite an abundance of quality singing from almost every member of the cast. Jane Archibald’s voice soared, but her acting as the Vixen sadly did not. The courtship scene with Ema Nikolovska’s clarion-toned Fox missed virtually all its charm, wit and mischief. The printed synopsis tells us, correctly, that the Vixen, having aroused the Hens with her revolutionary ideas, slaughters them in order to reclaim her freedom. Here, instead, they combine to create a girl-power band in the forest.
There are some attempts at humour, and on opening night the audience did its best to respond, with a few polite titters. The poacher, Harašta, lustily sung by Alex Halliday, appears in a He-man suit, while the dragonflies resemble some kind of second-rate superheroes. The fluff mountain that represents the Forester’s lazy, lascivious Dog stands out, as does the flashy Rooster and his flock of Hens in wedding dresses. And it is impossible not to love the children for their innocent energy – Joel Glickman Rosen’s Frog is a definite highlight.
The saving grace of the entire night was Christopher Purves’ Forester, thanks not only to his velvety resonant voice and clear diction, but also to his dominant stage presence. Johannes Debus steered the orchestra admirably but not always to optimum effect; some of his pacing was pedestrian, while the wedding scene was rushed and poorly balanced, so that the all-important chorus melody was all but inaudible.
Janáček’s music is indestructible. But I can’t help wondering why, despite the lukewarm reaction to this production’s London premiere, the Canadian Opera Company felt bound to bring it over. How about a proud new home-grown production to celebrate Canada’s extraordinary native land? Or – for guaranteed magic – why not import Sir David Pountney’s tried-and-tested, near-perfect staging?
