The Cunning Little Vixen - Janacek [DVD] [2003]

It is a great animation, full of humour with clever effects. Lead artists are from the European Opera Centre, as well as children Matthew Smith, Bea Manning, Nicholas Smith, Edward Weston who are also members of the New London Childrens Choir who take on the chorus of the opera, with the BBC Singers. All singing is very good, the adult solos are all very acommplished with good diction and the child soloists are obviously the best around. All language is English.

The opera was commisioned by the BBC and will be shown over easter.

Overall I think this is a great take on the opera, with a lot of quirky effects and subtle humour. Buy it!!

It is probably the only opera to have been taken from a run of daily cartoons, though the idea of Fred Basset, Garfield or Snoopy suddenly springing into operatic life is an appealing ring of changes from the usual melodrama. Geoff Dunbar has taken Janácek’s lead and turned The Cunning Little Vixen into an animated film. The score has been reduced by about 35 minutes, and the singing is in a more reserved (the pre-release information says ‘cartoon-like’) fashion. The singing is uniformly good, though Grant Doyle’s voice for the Forester is sometimes over young for the sexagenarian we see on screen. Christine Buffle is outstanding as the Vixen, both in the more ‘cartoon-like’ singing, and when at the height of the love duet in Act Two and her railings against the Badger (a hilarious scene) she is in more full voice. The only unconvincing voice is Richard Coxon as the Fox, who sounds too airy for the handsome seducer of Sharp-Ears. Kent Nagano’s command of the score is, however, very good indeed, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin play it very well indeed. It is not necessarily for the music that one should watch this film (though very good, even if the singing is not opera house standard), but for the animation. It is a resounding success. The style juxtaposes clearly drawn animals and humans against more representational watercolour backgrounds. So much detail has been packed in. The setting is, without doubt, Janácek’s own country retreat of Hukvaldy. The schoolmaster can be seen teaching in the school where the composer’s own father taught and the forest is more than reminiscent of the wooded mountains and hills around the village. It is an inspired setting.

What Geoff Dunbar is afforded in his choice of medium is a more vivid portrayal of the animals behaviour (which will almost certainly be a hit with adults and children alike), with a heavy dose of humour. The dog in the Forester’s farmyard is a dopey old thing, the chickens don’t need extra mannerisms, they’re just ridiculous on their own, and the Badger really is the crusty old tycoon of the libretto. The foxes themselves are pretty straightforward, though I do wish the director had avoided dressing the animals in ‘traditional’ folk costumes for the wedding. It’s confusing, and the only point when we see the animals standing around like humans. But perhaps this makes up for the only shortfall of this film, the human element of the opera is lacking. The Forester and the Schoolmaster are there (if only briefly), but the scenes in the pub are cut, giving no sense of the relentlessness of their lives. Whilst the animals are having fun and living life to the full in the forest, we are meant to watch three men grow old over their Pilsner. The amazingly honest and humane priest is only glimpsed (silently) at the opening of the film during the overture. I understand that a film whose obvious intent is to introduce a wider audience to Janácek’s work must have to make cuts, but at 90 minutes in total, the opera is hardly over long. It is through the juxtaposition of both animal and human worlds that the ideas of this opera are made clear. The film is more centred on the Vixen's life, and rather than through the mumblings of the pub but through her life is the Forester made aware of his own.

This is however a film and not the opera, a bold new interpretation of the original and will, I hope introduce many new people to both opera and to Janácek. It is marvellous that the BBC have invested in this film, which marks another landmark on the acceptance of Janácek into the more mainstream frame of classical music. This film has all the charm and life-affirming essence of other great animations, such as Watership Down, The Snowman or even Disney’s Bambi. Of course unlike those films, the Forester’s marvellous epiphany at the end of The Cunning Little Vixen dispels any of the sorrow children may face at the Vixen’s death, but like those previous models we are made more aware of the changing scenes of life. The Forester’s final words are extremely moving. And if Janácek’s opera had anything to say to audiences now, it is that life evolves. I only hope that when the film is shown over Easter, enough people are aware that it is on, so they may get to know the warmth of Janácek’s dazzling cartoon-opera.