Opera reviews: Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen and Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos

4 / 5 stars
The Cunning Little Vixen

THE contrasting fortunes of humans and animals in Czech composer Leos Janacek's tragi-comedy are set to a rich and varied score while the Royal Opera House's revived staging of Ariadne auf Naxos provides an unforgettable evening

opera, reviews, Janacek, The Cunning Little Vixen, Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, Clare ColvinThe fortunes of humans and animals in Leos Janacek's tragi-comedy has a rich and varied score[PH]

A foxy-looking redhead sits alone at a pub table varnishing her nails blood red, while moodily eyeing a man sitting over a pint nearby. Thus Daniel Slater’s production of The Cunning Little Vixen establishes a link at the start between the vixen cub the Forester takes home to his family and the village’s heartbreaker Terynka, who is usually an offstage presence.

Janacek was inspired by a strip cartoon running for several months in 1920 in a Czech newspaper relating the adventures of one Vixen Sharp-Ears. 

The opera, written by the composer in his final years, is a tragicomedy about the cycle of life, age and death. Janacek, who would go on nocturnal expeditions with gamekeepers to observe foxes, contrasts the behaviour of humans with that of animals in the wild. Janacek’s humans, rooted in a Czech village, are haunted by memories and regrets whereas the animals live for the moment.

Robert Innes Hopkins’s interior-based design doesn’t try to rival the rolling fields and woods of the Wormsley estate, visible through the transparent walls of Garsington’s pavilion. He transfers the action from inn to forest by means of ivy-patterned walls and ladders shifted by stagehands.  

The animals’ characteristics are suggested rather than realistically portrayed, as in the mosquito’s broken umbrella wings and funnel proboscis. The hens, in headscarves and red rubber glove coxcombs, knit busily while laying eggs, until the Vixen causes havoc in the henhouse by slaughtering the Cockerel.        

opera, reviews, Janacek, The Cunning Little Vixen, Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, Clare ColvinRichard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos is at the Royal Opera House [PH]

Claire Booth is ideal casting as the Vixen, and her voice is well suited to an eclectic score that draws on jazz and folk music. She is partnered by Victoria Simmonds’s dapper moustachioed Fox. Grant Doyle gives a sensitively nuanced portrayal of the ageing Forester.

Australian bass Joshua Bloom commands the stage physically and vocally as poacher Harasta, the Vixen’s nemesis. The orchestra under conductor Garry Walker brings out the richness and variety of Janecek’s evocative score. Last Sunday’s summer weather crowned a glorious evening.

The applause that greeted Finnish soprano Karita Mattila at the end of director Christof Loy’s revived staging of Ariadne auf Naxos was the longest and loudest acclaim for one singer that I have heard for some time.   There was every reason for praise, as the part of Ariadne requires a strenuously soaring final duet with her newfound love, Bacchus.  Richard Strauss loved the soprano voice, for which he wrote his most demanding work, and Mattila never flagged for a moment.

Loy’s production begins in spectacular fashion, opening on to designer Herbert Murauer’s marble art deco hall of a luxurious apartment block. As the troupe of opera singers arrive to perform for a rich man as after dinner entertainment, they are ushered into a lift, and the splendid hall disappears upwards, leaving them in a dingy basement.

Worse is to come, as the rich patron’s brusque Major Domo (Christoph Quest) orders the serious opera to run simultaneously with a Harlequin comedy show, so that the fireworks can start at nine. Ruxandra Donose’s young Composer storms at Thomas Allen’s harassed Music Master, while Jane Archibald’s perky Zerbinetta suggests they cut the boring bits of the opera in favour of comedy.

Financial necessity wins out over artistic integrity and the hybrid work is staged. Zerbinetta advises the abandoned Ariadne to forget Theseus and welcome the god Bacchus (Roberto Sacca). Wonderful singing by the cast, and inspired conducting by Antonio Pappano make this an unforgettable evening.  

Astonishingly, ticket prices are considerably lower than those of other main operas at Covent Garden for June and July.     

The Cunning Little Vixen is at the Garsington Opera at Wormsley, Nr High Wycombe, Bucks. For tickets, from £135 to £180, call 01865 361 636 or visit garsintonopera.org. Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos is at the Royal Opera House, London WC1. For tickets from £6 to £125 call  020 7304 4000 or visit roh.org.uk.

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