Janácek - The Cunning Little Vixen / Nicholas Hytner · Sir Charles Mackerras · Thomas Allen · Eva Jenis · Tháâtre du Chatelet [DVD]

I am very happy to give five stars here even though I DON'T particularly enjoy the opera. I love the music, but the opera itself--not speaking of the production under review--simply doesn't do much for me.Even so, I appreciate that it is very well-played, sung, danced, and designed. It's a lively and colorful, traditionalesque staging. It is one that Janacek would have no problem recognizing as his own creation, and yet, I am sure he would enjoy and approve of the 'modernity' of its realization on today's stage.I will add, I wish ALL opera DVDs had such easy-to-read subtitles. They are in English or French, and they can be turned off as well.And finally, I am very happy this is within the elite, rarefied group of opera DVDs that are NOT marred by picture and sound being out of synch. I have had an extremely bad run of luck lately, and I am happy to report this DVD does not suffer from that affliction.So, it is a little strange I'm not a fan of this particular opera, but I think most folks will be :-)

This is a very interesting opera, and an interesting staging; but I can't say it enchanted me completely. Certainly, I enjoyed it, and there are places where it sounds to me as tuneful as any folk melody. But something -- I can't quite put my finger on exactly what -- didn't seem quite as satisfying as another production I had seen on TV a number of years ago. There was one thing, however, that I preferred about this production. In the climax of that other production, when the title character keeps singing, "You would shoot me just because I am a fox" -- she made it an exclamation of outrage, and I kept thinking, "Well, they wouldn't shoot you if only you'd stop wasting time and run away!" In this production, she makes it a question of stunned incredulity, all the while she is trying to dodge away through the trees, and that, I thought, worked much better.

Janacek is steadily rising in the pantheon of 20th C opera composers, with more productions and more attention to his whole corpus of works. The Cunning Little Vixen is the latest success story; on the surface, a fairy tale based on a cartoon, featuring almost as much dance as singing, it would seem unlikely to be profound and emotionally compelling. But it is. The Huntsman, the principal character, stands and sings a concluding aria which is fuller of the love of life than anything I remember in any other opera of any era in any language! The orchestral music, as you'd expect if you know Janacek, is strangely original and "modern" and yet instantly accessible and enjoyable. There are two DVD productions of The Cunning Little Vixen, both well worth viewing and hearing. This is the one I prefer, both for the performance of the huntsman and for the charm of the costuming.

This is simply magical: terrific singing (especially by Thomas Allen), delightful staging (including fine dance sequences), and a near perfect interpretation of the music by Mackerras. Snape this up before it vanishes. Highly recommended.

Not the most up to date video or audio but very acceptable. Sir Charles Mackerras is an authority on Janacek and Thomas Allen is excellent. I am very happy to add this DVD to my library.

Very beautiful production.

This DVD is a pure delight, for me and my granddaughters. We watched it straight through in one sitting.

Unknown to most opera goers, Janacek's brilliant fable reverses most of the genre's liabilities. There is no bombast; the plot moves quickly, the libretto -- cobbled together by the composer from a newspaper comic strip -- is touching, deft and profound; and the only diva in sight is shot long before the finale. The opera doesn't need excessive fancy, which this production sometimes supplies in overabundance, and the work's dark tone, its grounding in rural Moravian peasant life, is negated by the somewhat flouncy presentation and a poor translation that elicits laughter in the wrong places -- a much better English version exists. It's also unfortunate that the chorus is moved off-stage to favor dancers, which reduces the rollicking climax to the wedding scene (of course, Janacek himself had so often used off-stage choruses to memorable effect, but here the bustle of voices is needed). Nonetheless, this cyrstalline DVD (some of the images nearly convince us we're in a theater) gives us Thomas Allen as the ideal Forester, the great Czech singer Richard Novak as the Badger/Parson, mostly vivid set designs and colors, a rousing performance by Janacek expert Charles Mackerras, and the compact perfection of the opera itself. Now if only From the House of the Dead, Kat'ya Kabanova, Osud, and the rest of Janacek's singular operas would be released.

This CD is an excellent production of the opera and is one I have viewed several times before purchase. It has been unavailable in the UK for some time and I am thrilled to have been able to buy my own copy from EliteDigital UK.