With the new production of The Cunning Little Vixen at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Sir Simon Rattle’s long-running cycle of Janáček’s mature operas has finally reached its conclusion. The cycle, which started some fifteen years ago with From the House of the Dead (in the extraordinary production of Patrice Chéreau), has offered no shortage of dramatic high-points – not least Claus Guth’s hypnotically sinister Makropulos Affair and Robert Carsen’s enjoyably bizarre Mr Brouček
While Janáček was drawn to unconventional sources – just try to find the through-line that connects his last five operas – The Cunning Little Vixen has some claim to being his strangest operatic subject. The co-existence of humans and talking animals will pose no major challenges to anyone raised on Warner Bros. cartoons, but the magical life of the forest combined with the extreme banality of human existence – the two worlds only really intersect through the figure of the Forester – combine to provide a puzzling foundation for a work of drama. Yet the success of the opera lies less in its narrative than in the cumulative power of its loosely-connected episodes: it is a work that, given the right performance, can become something considerably greater than the sum of its parts.
It is, nonetheless, a difficult opera to stage: the fact that the animal roles must necessarily be sung by humans requires either considerable invention on the part of the costume designers or a fairly large suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. However, Ted Huffman’s staging seemed largely unconcerned with the divide between the opera’s two worlds. This is not to suggest that it was slack or unfocussed, rather that the simple differences in the ways the characters moved was sufficient to distinguish human from animal.
Janáček: Das schlaue Füchslein. Sir Simon Rattle, conductor. Ted Huffman, director. Belin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, March 2026. © 2026 by Monika Rittershaus / Staatsoper Unter den Linden.
The menagerie of forest creatures was represented by a troupe of dancers who cavorted around the stage during certain key scenes. At their least convincing, the interventions of the dancers were closer to acrobatic routines – there were hand-stands, back-flips and even some twirling from suspended cables – leaving one with a sense that the subtle suggestion of animal behaviour had given way to pure spectacle. More often, however, the figures on stage managed to convey the essence of the frogs, foxes and other animals they were intended to represent. Perhaps the finest example of animal mimicry came in the chicken-coop scene that concludes the first act, in which the jerky movements of the various hens created an infectiously dynamic backdrop for the Vixen’s eventual escape.
Admittedly not every scene was equally successful. The insufficient differentiation between the Parson and the Badger – doubled by the same singer – led to a confusing moment at the beginning of the second act when it seemed as though the Vixen was kicking the Parson out of his house, a misapprehension that was only compounded by the Parson’s dejected appearance in the tavern in the following scene. At times, however, it almost seemed that Mr Huffman was using the uncertain boundaries between animal and human to his advantage: the confusion – which was most apparent in the scene in which the Schoolmaster believes the Vixen to be the human object of his infatuation – forced one at least to question whether the staging intended the animal characters to be equal participants in the human drama. The subsequent scene – in which the Vixen and her Fox suitor devour a rabbit – effectively put an end to that line of interpretation … but the fact that the opera could have stood up to such a reading does perhaps explain its continuing fascination.
For the most part, however, the staging remained straightforward, illustrating the events of the libretto with the necessary attention to character and setting, but without feeling the need to inject too much conceptual waywardness. It was, for all its brightly-coloured costumes and the exertions of its dancers, a fairly restrained reading of the story. The action took place within the confines of a large white space that filled the front half of the stage, and which was transformed into the story’s various locales by means of a few well-chosen props: a large mound of earth for the outdoor scenes, some wooden tables and chairs for the tavern, and so forth. If the arrangement of the stage often seemed designed to leave as much space as possible for the dancers, Mr Huffman’s carefully conceived characters ensured that the emotional contours of the story remained in sharp focus throughout the evening.
Janáček: Das schlaue Füchslein. Sir Simon Rattle, conductor. Ted Huffman, director. Belin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, March 2026. © 2026 by Monika Rittershaus / Staatsoper Unter den Linden.
However, even a less-compelling staging might still have succeeded on the strength of the evening’s musical performances. Vera-Lotte Boecker was ideally suited to the title role, balancing moments of sweetness with charismatic agility. Her petulant scenes in the first act – railing against her captivity, attacking the Forester’s abusive children, and attempting to politicise the chickens – had their own delightful verve, but her finest scene was undoubtedly her meeting with the Fox at the end of the second act, which brought a distinctly human passion to the doubt and anticipation of her blossoming romance. The scene also benefitted from the assured Fox of Magdalena Kožená, whose initial guardedness was soon transformed into full-blown ardour.
Despite the Vixen’s presence in numerous scenes, the opera remains an ensemble work that devotes equal weight to its human and animal facets; nonetheless, Svatopluk Sem made a strong argument for the Forester being the work’s spiritual centre, the one figure who is almost able to intuit the universal cycles that drive the apparently ordinary events of the story. Even the gruffness in his opening scene was tempered by an appreciation of the natural world. While his appearances at the end of the first and middle of the second acts seemed more attuned to the traditional comedic bluster of the human outwitted by an animal, his final words to the schoolmaster in the penultimate scene were among the finest moments of the evening, and his subsequent solo scene in the forest was possibly even finer, his halting observations constantly hinting at greater, ungraspable profundities.
It was, however, Sir Simon Rattle’s lucid reading of the score that offered the evening’s most consistent rewards. In addition to his obvious affection for Janáček’s music – a constant throughout the cycle – one could also hear his appreciation of Ravel, Debussy and, to a lesser extent, Stravinsky, in the buzzing forest evocation of the opening and closing scenes, and in the impressionistic interludes that formed an integral part of each act. Without overshadowing the singers or distracting from the narrative, the orchestral playing asserted itself throughout the evening, supporting the stage action while offering its own eloquent commentary on the events. Indeed, if the structure of The Cunning Little Vixen can seem oddly fragmented, Sir Simon’s musical direction made a consistent case for Janáček’s score as the factor that both unites and elevates the libretto’s disparate episodes.
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