Show Tue, 21-Fri, 24 May 2019
Space Susie Sainsbury Theatre
Venue Royal Academy of Music
Philip Sunderland conductor
Ashley Dean director
Laura Jane Stanfield designer
Kevin Treacy lighting designer
Christina Fulcher movement director
Janáček arr Jonathan Dove The Cunning Little Vixen
One of the great masterpieces of early 20th-century music, Janáček’s extraordinary and unusual opera The Cunning Little Vixen is a life-affirming meditation on man’s relationship with nature.
Drawing unlikely inspiration from an illustrated story serialised in his local newspaper about the life of a scheming vixen cub who is captured by the local forester, grows up in captivity on his farm and then escapes back to the woods to raise a family, Janáček transformed this seemingly lighthearted tale into a philosophical reflection on the eternal cycle of life, presented here in Jonathan Dove’s vibrant re-orchestration.
Like the ageing forester in the story, Janáček was well aware at the time of composing the opera that most of his life was behind him (he was 70 years old when it was premiered in 1924). However, The Cunning Little Vixen contains some of the composer’s most youthful and vivid music as he embraces the beauty, cruelty and indefinable magic of nature. It is this fresh exuberance of a composer at the height of his powers that has helped to secure the opera's reputation as an enduring masterpiece.
Sung in English.
Vixen Sharp Ears Alexandra Oomens (21,23) / Lina Dambrauskaitė (22,24)
Fox Olivia Warburton / Hazel Neighbour
Forester James Geidt
Priest and Badger Thomas Bennett
Schoolmaster and Mosquito Peter Harris
Forester's Wife Clare Tunney
Pasek (Innkeeper) Robert Forrest
Harasta (a poacher) Niall Anderson
Innkeeper's Wife Yuki Akimoto
Dog Gabrielė Kupšytė
Owl Samantha Quillish
Rooster Sam Kibble
Chief Hen Lorna McLean
Jay Hope Lavelle
Woodpecker Helen May
Pepik (Forester's Son) Aimee Fisk
Frantik (Pepik's Friend) Maya Colwell
Vixen Cub Anna Mengel
Frog Kathleen NicDhiarmada
Grasshopper Ashleigh Charlton
Cricket Jack Lee
Hens and Fox Cubs Caroline Blair, Margaret Mitchell, Clara Lobo, Maria Ejderos Sveinungsen, Avital Green, Leah McCabe