2. 10. 2020, 7 pm
Mahen Theatre, Brno
| Author: | Leoš Janáček |
| Conductor: | Martin Doubravský |
| Director: | Linda Keprtová |
F. X. Šalda Theatre (Liberec)
Act 1
The Forester is walking trough his woods on a hot summer afternoon. He lies down and soon dozes off. The forest is full of life: little flies circle around, a cricket and grasshopper get swept up in an infectious waltz, a mosquito drunk on human blood goes reeling about and a little frog tries to catch him. The young vixen scares the frog, who jumps onto the sleeping man. Waking, the Forester catches the vixen and drags her home.
Scene change
The captive vixen lives with the dog in the Forester’s yard. Pepík, the Forester’s grandson, brings a friend, and they tease the vixen; she bites Pepík. In response to his wife’s complains, the Forester ties up the vixen. Feeling the strangeness of real captivity, the vixen dreams of freedom in the wild forest. Mocked by the cock, the vixen calls on all the chickens to rebel against his domination and their forced labour. Then she tricks them, and slaughter them all. The enraged Forester attacks at the vixen, but she bites through her ropes and escapes to freedom.
Act 2
The vixen has acquired a few traits during her stay at the Forester’s abode, including a little guile. She drives out a grumpy old badger from his den and happily takes his place there, supported by insect admirers.
Scene change
Meanwhile, at Pásek’s Inn, the Forester and his friends have settled down to a game of cards and some good drink. The Forester pokes fun at the Schoolmaster‘s fondness for a certain Terynka, and the Schoolmaster pays him back in kind by asking after the vixen. They all leave the inn staggering drunk. The vixen secretly observes these late-night wanderers and hides among the sunflowers. Their trembling attracts the attention of the Schoolmaster, who sees in them the face of Terynka, the local beauty, and tries to go after her. Even the Parson‘s recollection of a love from his student days is interrupted by the vixen. The Forester shoots at her; both men then run off in fright.
Scene change
On a lovely moonlit summer night the vixen encounters the dashing fox. Their initial attraction soon grows into love, which is consummated in the vixen’s den. The woodland creatures view the vixen‘s immoral ways with indignation, and are satisfied only once a hastily-arranged wedding has taken place.
Act 3
Summer turns into autumn. The vixen is now a skilled hunter. The Forester runs into Harašta, a poultry trader. Harašta boasts of his upcoming marriage with Terynka, while the Forester wanders whether Harašta has been poaching in his woods. The vixen appears with Goldskin and her fox cubs, and she runs into Harašta, who is carrying a basket full of chickens. When he threatens to kill her in order to present her tail as a gift to Terynka, she decides to have revenge. He falls into her trap, and she scratches his nose. As her cubs eat Harašta’s chickens, Harašta fires into the pack the vixen remains lying on the ground, dead.
Scene change
At the inn, the Forester learns that Harašta’s Terinka has received a new muff for her wedding – so that’s why he found the fox den empty! The Schoolmaster is pained by the news of Terinka’s wedding. A feeling of sorrow at lost youth descends over them all, and the Forester thinks it better to head for home now. On his way he thinks back to his own youth, and remeber his wedding night. The forest looks the same as it did when he found the vixen, all the woodland creatures ate here just like they were then. Only the little fox is missing… And then he sees her – the living image of her mother! A tiny frog appears, the grandchild of the earlier one.
Conductor: Martin Doubravský
Director: Linda Keprtová
Set design: Michal Syrový
Costume design: Tomáš Kypta
Choreography: Ladislava Košíková
Dramaturgy: Vojtěch Babka
Choirmaster: Anna Novotná Pešková
CAST
Sharp-Ears, the Vixen: Livia Obručnik Vénosová
Golden-back, the Fox: Alžběta Vomáčková
Forester: Pavel Vančura
Schoolmaster / Mosquito: Dušan Růžička
Priest / Badger: Josef Kovačič
Forester´s wife: Jaroslava Schillerová
Pásek: Sergej Kostov
Mrs. Pásková / Woodpecker: Blanka Černá
Lapák, the dog: Petra Vondrová
Harašta: Csaba Kotlár
Cock / Owl: Věra Poláchová
Choholka: Radka Černíková
Children roles: Children´s Choir Severáček
(Choirmaster Severáček: Silvie Pálková)
Son: Marian Mičjar
Daughter-in-law: Anna Novotná-Pešková
Due to the quarantine of some members of the opera ensemble of the F. X. Šalda Theatre Liberec, this festival performance is cancelled without substitute. Tickets may be returned by 31 October 2020 at the National Theatre Brno Customer Centre, Dvořákova 11. All information about festival programme changes is available at www.janacek-brno.cz, on the Janáček Brno Facebook page, or you can get information by phone.
Even though Janáček´s opera The Cunning Little Vixen is inseparably connected with the city of Brno, this time at the festival it will be presented by the opera ensemble of the F. X. Šalda Theatre from Liberec in a new production by director Linda Keprtová and chief conductor Martin Doubravský. The Liberec ensemble has recently gained the attention of spectators and reviewers alike through a number of interesting productions, and it was no different in the case of the last Janáček piece they performed. Festival visitors can thus look forward to seeing a young director’s fresh interpretation of one of Leoš Janáček´s most popular works.
Each of Janáček´s operas is an original, and this is also true of The Cunning Little Vixen, where the worlds of humans and animals intertwine. It is lyrical and melodic; it sparkles with humour, and is both kind and prickly at the same time, as is typical of Janáček’s inimitable style. It fascinates the viewer through its earthiness and gentle philosophical approach to the eternal cycle of life and death. The tale about a cunning lady fox named Sharp-Ears (originally it was Swift-Legs, but a typesetter at the printing house made an error) has its origins in a regular cartoon series commissioned by the Brno editorial office of the Lidové noviny newspaper from painter Stanislav Lolek and the writer and journalist Rudolf Těsnohlídek, who supplied the witty text. The Cunning Little Vixen was published four or five times a week in the Lidové noviny newspaper from April to June 1920. It soon became popular with the public and was later published as a separate book. Janáček´s household were regular readers of Lidové noviny and Janáček was fascinated by the cartoons. During his holidays in 1921, he started sketching out a script and working on the libretto for a new opera about Vixen Sharp-Ears. He selected ten chapters from the original twenty-three in the series, emphasizing the world of animals and reducing the number of human characters – he merged some of them into one. Těsnohlídek´s story ends with a wedding between Sharp-Ears the vixen and Gold-Spur the fox, but Janáček decided to make a significant change in contrast with the original and let the main character die. As a true dramatist, he felt the need for catharsis. He thus made the story more than a charming portrayal of First Republic life, transforming it into a reflection on the eternal cycle of existence.
“Why? Because we can still recognize ourselves within it.” A proposition which became the starting point in my personal journey to The Cunning Little Vixen. In my personal search, which never ceases to surprise me because I keep on discovering what is “only” an ordinary person, I find the greatest value that we have lies in opera, an art form that is so detached from ordinary worries. It amazes me again and again how easily each of us can become such a Forester, and how many Schoolmasters, people tormented by love, people for whom there is no way back, we commonly meet without noticing them. And how many of us have let ourselves be grasped by such a Vixen, one whom we have supported right from the start, keeping our fingers crossed for her, projecting our own dreams and wishes onto her, and how many of us have kept on asking like the Forester´s wife. Janáček writes about things which are common to the human experience. About the topics which accompany the ordinary days of our existence, and so become unusual. He writes about an order in which new things compete with old, in which every being fights for the possibility to exercise free thought. He writes about those desires which are and will always be the strongest motivation. He writes about all of us. He writes but does not judge, because who knows who we are?
Linda Keprtová