By Leoš Janá?ek
Leoš Janácek composed a Czech “Midsummer Night’s Dream” by turning a serial comic strip from a local newspaper into one of his most touching and inventive operas. The ingenious story tells the adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears set in a world populated by humans as well as forest and barnyard animals.
Janácek’s opera is a masterful amalgam of operatic dialogue, songs, chorus, wordless singing, ballet, mime, and orchestral interludes. He combines the mythic, the tragic and the comic, creating a philosophical reflection on the cycle of life and death. It is one of the 20th century’s most imaginative excursions into a fantasy.
Meet the cast of creatures of "The Cunning Little Vixen".
Príhody Lišky Bystroušky - The Cunning Little Vixen
"My very own Vixen Bystrouska, where did you take your lament from, when the old forester tied you to the kennel? You, motif of the sharp teeth, where have you seen yourself before? You chicks and you, cockerel, not suspecting the Vixen's schemes, where did you hatch before you pit-a-patted on stage? There, in my yard. There were three in the morning, and before the evening nine. The white one was the wild one among you. The hen called you vigilantly. "KO Krrrrrrrrrr!" she taught you to peck, to drink, to scratch. Your whole life, chicks - even the spiritual life, the envy, the greed - ran before my eyes.
(Leoš Janá?ek)
According to the Janá?ek's servant for fourty-four years, Marie Stejskalová, it was her laughing at the newspaper cartoons of the adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears that drew her master to the subject of P?íhody Lišky Bystroušky, a story that appeared in a local newspaper in 1920. The Brno popular newspaper Lidové noviny had commissioned Rudolf T?snohlídek to write a novel to be serialised which was to be based around a series of drawings by Stanislav Lolek telling the tale of the adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears."
T?snohlídek’s novel became the basis for the libretto. Janá?ek moves away from pure traditionalism by pioneering a fantastic musical language for the forest, based on his ‘notebook’ of animal sounds and a bitter sweet lyricism for the Vixen and the Fox. These stylistic innovations are married with a moving pantheistic close where the Forester realises, in one of Janá?ek’s most tender passages that nature has a cyclical basis, which goes much beyond the traditional mirrors of the fairy-tale opera genre, such as found in Dvo?ák’s Rusalka. It has, unsurprisingly received a large number of performances across the world.
Synopsis
Act I
It all begins on a sunny, summer afternoon in the woods. The Forester is taking a nap. Around him, flora and fauna are in full swing. Crickets waltz, dragonflies buzz and a frog leaps after a mosquito, landing on the Forester's nose. He wakes to find a little fox cub, and takes her back home as a pet for the kids.
In the Forester's yard, several months later, the fox cub has become a mature, and cunning, vixen. She discusses love with Lapak the dog. The Vixen brushes off the dog's advances, and nips at the heels of the Forester's two children, Frantík and Pepík. The Forester ties the Vixen up and, as night falls, she dreams that she's transformed into a young girl.
At dawn, Lapak and the Rooster warn the Vixen not to be such an upstart. "You shouldn't have licked the dishes," the dog advises. The Vixen has advice of her own for the submissive hens in the barnyard. She says, "Friends, sisters, abolish the old order. Create a new world where you'll get your fair share." The selfish Rooster takes offense. A squabble breaks out, and the Vixen — true to her nature as a fox in the henhouse — begins killing the hens. The Forester and his wife put a stop to the commotion, but the Vixen bites through her leash, knocks over the Forester and escapes back to the woods.
Act II
The scene switches to a local Inn, where the Forester and the Schoolmaster are at the bar playing cards, joined by the local Priest. The Forester sings a song about the passing of time and the men gently rib each other, commenting on events in their lives. Night falls, and a short interlude brings us to a forest path. The Vixen observes the tipsy Schoolmaster making his way home and mistaking a sunflower for a girlfriend. The Priest comes along, too. His mind wanders back to a girl he once knew. All are startled by a shotgun blast. It's the Forester, trying to shoot the Vixen.
The scene changes again, to the door of the Vixen's burrow. She hears rustling nearby. It's a male fox — and handsome, too. By the moonlight she tells him her life story. After a few awkward moments the two fall in love, and retreat inside the burrow. From above, an owl and a blue jay comment on the situation. Soon the two foxes emerge and announce their impending marriage, to be administered by the Woodpecker, and they celebrate with a rambunctious dance.
Act III
Time has passed and now the Vixen has a family. The scene is a clearing in the forest. Harasta, the poultry dealer, sings a folk song. He notices a dead rabbit beside the trail. So does the Forester, who also spies part of a fox tail nearby. Thinking it must belong to the Vixen, he sets a trap and they both leave.
The Vixen, with her husband and their family of little cubs, sees the trap for what it is. When Harasta walks by with his bag full of poultry, the Vixen senses an opportunity. She feigns an injury. When Harasta goes for his gun, she lures him into the forest where he trips, falling flat on his nose. Quickly, the foxes dig into Harasta's poultry bag. But before they finish he returns with his gun, and fires. They all scatter, except for one — the Vixen, who lies dying.
The scene changes back to the local Inn, where the mood is melancholy. The Schoolmaster is sad to hear that the woman he fancies has married someone else. The Forester feels old age coming on. They both miss their friend the Priest, who has moved away.
The final scene contains some of Janacek's most passionately lyrical music. The Forester sets out for home, walking through the woods. A sweet memory comes back to him — of gathering wild mushrooms with his wife, as a young couple in love. "Is it real or a fairy tale?" he asks himself. At peace with his beloved woods and with himself, he lies down for a nap and the scene mirrors the very opening of the opera. Animals hover around him. He dreams about the Vixen, but as he reaches out to grab her he finds only a frog, the grandson of the frog that landed on his face in Act One. The opera ends as the Forester quietly lets his gun slip to the ground.
The Returning Little Vixen
When writing P?íhody lišky bystroušky (or ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’, as it has come to be called), Leoš Janá?ek was not entirely sure what to call his new work, an ‘opera’, a ‘fable’ or perhaps, most aptly, an ‘opera idyll’. There is a balance in the piece between realism (the various animals on stage and the stories of how Janá?ek notated their real-life counterparts’ noises and calls) and symbolism (the dual casting of animals and humans, the Forester’s final numinous epiphany). Of all Janá?ek’s operas, this one - his seventh - is perhaps most open to visual interpretation, but the composer himself was undecided of how his seventh opera should be staged. It is through the design that the audience is made aware that the opera is not just a simple tale about forest animals, but about the wider cycle of nature. A realistic mise en scène shows the gap between the animals and humans, where a less literal interpretation joins the two. It is not entirely clear whether Janá?ek wanted the two worlds linked. He encouraged the doubling of various parts, but this may have been partly a cost-effective decision for small or provincial theatres, such as in Janá?ek’s home-town of Brno. He wrote after the first performance of The Vixen in Mainz that ‘only a hint should surface of the sameness of our cycle and that of animal life. That is enough – it is true that for most this symbolism is too little’. Whatever the associations, two styles of production are associated with The Vixen, one realistic and one more symbolic. Composed in Brno and at Janá?ek’s retreat in Hukvaldy without hitch or revision, the opera was premiered in Brno on November 6, 1924, as recollected by his maid.
The master took great pleasure from the Brno première of The Vixen. He would come back from rehearsals laughing at how the singers were learning to crawl on all fours. The opera chief Neumann, the producer Zítek, and the painter Milén, who designed the sets, made such beautiful work out of The Vixen, that it surprised even the master.
(Janá?ek’s housekeeper)
Indeed ‘the master’ had very few reservations about the production, only that some of the roles were cast as adults, where children would have been more fitting. Milén’s designs for the Brno premiere tended towards a more ‘arty’ style, with most famously a cubist dachshund. Vixen Sharp-Ears was a foxified human, wearing a feather boa and a hat with subtle little ears, as depicted in Milén’s illustration on the front page of the original piano score. The Prague premiere (in a new production by Ferdinand Pujman and sets by Josef ?apek) was given on 18 May 1925 as part of that year’s International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) festival, leading to the first broadcast of one of Janá?ek’s operas. Not all aspects of the production pleased the composer. The Forester’s Act III aria when his ‘gun simply slips from his hand’ was changed to him convulsing in death throes. Janá?ek and his German translator Max Brod despised the idea. When Brod made his own translation of the opera for the first foreign premiere in Mainz in 1927, he also placed his own stamp on the opera, ‘to make things clearer and more concentrated’. His German version of the text was more of a free adaptation of Janá?ek’s original rather than a faithful translation. It created links between Harašta’s invisible lover Terynka and the title-role, but on the contrary he abolished many of the doubled parts, breaking down the connections between the animals and humans. Janá?ek never interpolated Brod’s changes into his original, preferring his own intentions. The opera continued to remain dear to the composer throughout his life and the final scene was played at his funeral in 1928, as later recalled by his wife.
At ten there was the funeral at the theatre. The opera director František Neumann began to play the final scene from The Cunning Little Vixen where the Forester – sung by Arnold Flögl – reminisces. As soon as I heard the first few bars it was if a strong stream of light shone through that eerie indistinctness which had enveloped me […]. Music was necessary for me to grasp fully what had happened, so that I could feel in its full intensity that Leoš, who had written this work so packed with life, was now lying dead.
(Janá?ek's wife)
After Janá?ek’s death, before World War II, further performances took place in Brno, in Prague (1937, in a new orchestration by František Škvor and Jaroslav ?ídký) as well as in Liberec, Bratislava, Olomouc, Plze? and Ostrava. For some time however the opera remained only popular in Czechoslovakia, despite notable premieres in Mainz and Zagreb (1939). After the war Walter Felsenstein’s staged the opera at the Komische Oper, Berlin. Conducted by Václav Neumann, the production was seen in Paris in 1957 and Prague in 1962. This more realistic production helped to popularise the little-known piece, bringing it to non-Czech audiences. Contrary to prevailing opinion, however, Felsenstein's production did not establish The Vixen outside Central Europe. The opera’s first UK performance was at the Sadler’s Wells Opera in 1961, conducted by Colin Davis, in a production by Colin Graham with designs by Barry Kay. Still, The Cunning Little Vixen did not appear with regularity outside Germany and Czechoslovakia until the 1970s. It was performed at the Royal Academy of Music in 1973 and in 1975 Jonathan Miller staged a production at Glyndebourne, which then toured and conducted by a young Simon Rattle. The opera was also staged during the 1970s in Santa Fe (1975), Melbourne (1976), San Francisco (1977), Osaka (1977), Gothenburg (1978) and Tokyo (1978), marking its final established entry into the world-wide repertory. (Gavin Plumley)
Leoš Janá?ek
Leoš Janá?ek (July 3, 1854 – August 12, 1928) was a Czech composer. He was inspired by Czech, Moravian and all Slavic folk music and on these roots created his original style. His most celebrated compositions, besides his operas, include the symphonic poem Sinfonietta, the oratorial Glagolitic Mass, the rhapsody Taras Bulba, the instrumental cycle Lachian Dances, and his string quartets.
Life And Work
Janá?ek was born in Hukvaldy, Moravia, (then part of the Austrian Empire), the son of a schoolmaster. In 1865 he enrolled as a ward of the foundation of the Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno, where he took part in choral singing and occasionally played the organ. In 1874 went to Prague to study music at Prague organ school and made a living as a music teacher. He also conducted various amateur choirs. From October 1879 to February 1880 he studied piano, organ, and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory; among his teachers there were Oskar Paul and Leo Grill. From April to June 1880 he studied composition at the Vienna Conservatory with Franz Krenn. In Leipzig Janá?ek composed Thema con variazioni for piano in B flat subtitled Zdenka’s Variations. In 1881 he returned to Brno, where he married Zdenka Schulzová. He was appointed director of the organ school, a post he held until 1919, when the organ school became the Brno Conservatory. In 1888 he attended the performance in Prague of Tchaikovsky’s music, and he met the older composer personally. At that time he also started a systematic study and collection of folk songs, dances and music. In 1903 his daughter Olga died. In 1905 Janá?ek attended a demonstration in support of a Czech university in Brno, which inspired his composition of the 1. X. 1905 piano sonata. In 1916 he started a long professional and personal relationship with theatre critic, dramatist and translator Max Brod. When Jen?fa was performed in Prague in 1916 it was a great success, and brought Janá?ek his first acclaim; he was 62. A year later he met Kamila Stösslová, a young married woman who was an inspiration to him for the remaining years of his life, and with whom he conducted an obsessive correspondence – passionate on his side at least. In 1924, the year of his 70th birthday, the first biography of Janá?ek was published by Max Brod. In 1925 he retired. In 1926 Janá?ek travelled to England, The Netherlands and Germany. In August 1928, along with Kamila Stösslová and her son Otta, he made an excursion to Štramberk. Soon after this Janá?ek became ill, and died in the sanatorium of Dr. L. Klein in Ostrava. He is buried at the Central Cemetery in Brno.
Style
In 1874 Janá?ek became friends with Antonín Dvo?ák, and began composing in a relatively traditional romantic style, but after his opera Šárka (1881), his style began to change. He made a study of Moravian and Slovak folk music and used elements of it in his own music. He especially focused on studying and reproducing the rhythm and the pitch contour and inflections of normal Czech speech, which helped in creating the very distinctive vocal melodies in his opera Jen?fa (1904). Going much farther than Modest Mussorgsky and anticipating the later work of Béla Bartók in such styles, Janá?ek made this a distinguishing feature of his vocal writing (Samson 1977). He is best known for the music he wrote from this point to the end of his life. Although many consider his output from this period to mark his mature style, he had been writing in this fashion for quite a number of years but had simply not received wide public acclaim earlier. Much of Janá?ek's work displays great originality and individuality. His work is tonal, although it employs a vastly expanded view of tonality. He also uses unorthodox chord spacings and structures, often making use of modality: "there is no music without key. Atonality abolishes definite key, and thus tonal modulation....Folksong knows of no atonality." (Hollander 1963) He features accompaniment figures and patterns, with according to Jim Samson, "the on-going movement of his music...similarly achieved by unorthodox means—often a discourse of short, 'unfinished' phrases comprising constant repetitions of short motives which gather momentum in a cumulative manner." (Samson 1977)
Legacy
Janá?ek belongs to a wave of 20th century composers who were seeking greater realism and greater connection with everyday life, combined with a more all-encompassing use of musical resources. His operas in particular demonstrate the use of "speech"-derived melodic lines, folk and traditional material, and complex modal musical argument. Janá?ek's works are still regularly performed around the world, and are generally considered popular with audiences. He would also inspire later composers in his homeland, as well as music theorists, among them Jaroslav Volek, to place modal development alongside of harmony in importance in music. Many see the operas Ká?a Kabanová (1921), The Cunning Little Vixen (1924), The Makropulos Affair (1926) and From the House of the Dead (after a novel by Dostoevsky, premiered in 1930, after his death) as his finest works. The conductor Sir Charles Mackerras has become particularly closely associated with them. His chamber music, while not especially voluminous, includes works which are generally considered to be "in the standard repertory" as 20th century classics, particularly his two string quartets: Quartet No. 1, "The Kreutzer Sonata" inspired by the Tolstoy novel, and the Quartet No. 2, "Intimate Letters". At Frankfurt am Main modern music festival in 1926 Ilona Št?pánová-Kurzová performed the world premiere of Janá?ek's Concertino; the Czech premiere took place on February 16 1926 in Brno. Other well known pieces by Janá?ek include the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass (the text written in Old Church Slavonic), Lachian Dances, and the rhapsody Taras Bulba. These pieces and the above mentioned four late operas were all written in the last decade of Janá?ek's life.
Operas
- 1887 - Šárka
- 1894 - Po?átek Románu, "The Beginning of a Romance"
- 1904 - Její pastorky?a, "Her Stepdaughter", known in English as Jen?fa
- 1904 - Osud, "Fate"
- 1920 - Výlety pana Brou?ka, "The Excursions of Mr. Broucek"
- 1921 - Ká?a Kabanová
- 1924 - P?íhody lišky Bystroušky, "The Cunning Little Vixen"
- 1926 - V?c Makropulos, "The Makropoulos Affair"
- 1930 - Z mrtvého domu, "From the House of the Dead"
Kamila Stösslová - the composer's muse
Every year it was customary for Janá?ek to spend a few weeks in the Moravian spa town of Luha?ovice. There he took the waters and strolled through the countryside. His opera Osud is set there, and it recalls much of the cosmopolitan holiday atmosphere of the place in the opening of the first act. In the summer of 1917 Janá?ek was enjoying great popularity, as Jen?fa had finally been heard in Prague. Something more important happened at the spa town however, as it was there that he met Kamila Stösslová, the young wife of an antique dealer from Písek, who greatly influenced the composer’s last period of productivity. Janá?ek was twice her age yet became utterly infatuated with her. Their relationship is detailed extensively in their correspondence of more than seven hundred letters. Many of Stösslová’s letters were burnt by Janá?ek, but the large majority of his to her survived.
Throughout their communications Janá?ek mentioned his work and often told Stösslová that she was the influence for the work at hand. Very shortly after the composer’s visit to Luha?ovice in July 1917 he started composing the setting of the poem’s ‘from the pen of a self-taught man’ printed in the local paper, which told the story of a farm boy’s sexual infatuation with a gypsy girl. These poems became the song cycle Zápisník zmizelého [A Diary of One who disappeared]. Janá?ek wrote to Kamila saying that, ‘regularly in the afternoon a few motifs occur to me for those beautiful little poems about that Gypsy love. Perhaps a nice little musical romance will come out of it – and a tiny bit of the Luha?ovice mood would be in it.’
ndeed he went on to write further that ‘the black Gypsy girl in my Diary – that was especially you’. As soon as the final revision of the work was completed Janá?ek started work on the next ‘Kamila’ work, his opera Kát'a Kabanová. Again the influence of his love for Stösslová was clearly stated in his series of letters to her on the subject. He wrote that he ‘always placed [her] image on Kát'a Kabanová when [he] was writing the opera’, and when it was finished he told her that ‘you know it’s your work’. In fact throughout their correspondence, and as Janá?ek finished Kát’a and moved onto the Vixen, and Emilia in V?c Makropulos he drew parallels with their characters and that of Kamila. But as John Tyrrell writes in his introduction to the English edition of the letters that although they are ‘the most important source for the understanding of Janá?ek’s emotional and creative life in the last twelve years’, apart from their musicological significance ‘they contain a great love story’.
Their story was not always happy. As with Janá?ek’s obsession with Kamila Urválková and his affair with Gabriela Horvátová (the Kostelni?ka for the Prague premiere of Jen?fa) there were recriminations at home, and his dealings with his wife became increasingly strained. The relationship with Stösslová was never consummated however, and sometimes her lack of ability in replying to the composer’s letters caused him great upset. That apart, she was the woman who influenced the composer more than anyone or anything else. More often than not the warmth that he felt towards her found its way into the amazingly humanitarian works of his last period of composition.
Throughout his life of domestic fireworks we see there are two things which influenced him profoundly, over and over again: a sense of place, and a sense of those whom he loved and who loved him. The impact of Kamila Stösslová cannot be emphasised enough when considering the great operas of his maturity. For a man whose first main opera was heard in his 50th year, the achievement of Leoš Janá?ek is immense and emotionally startling.
