Beyond the forest

Mimìs, Violettas, and Cio-Cio-Sans may live, love, and meet their ends without a tear from me, but I have never left a performance of Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen dry-eyed.

First, a note on the title: the literal translation of Príhody lisky Bystrousky is The Adventures of the Vixen Known as Sharp-Ears (no diminutive or cunning is expressed; it seems to have been erroneously adopted in the late 20th century resulting from the title given to Janácek’s close friend Max Brod’s German version of the libretto entitled Die schlaue Füchslein, and the English translation has stuck).

As with last week’s Falstaff, which premiered when Giuseppe Verdi was 79, Janácek wrote this masterpiece late in life: he was 70 when it received its first performance in Brno in 1924, but it marked no farewell to music. In his remaining four years of life he would go on to compose (among other notable works) Vec Makropulos, Z mrtvého domu (From the House of the Dead), the Glagolitic Mass, the Sinfonietta, and the Second String Quartet, subtitled “Intimate Letters.”

And what of those letters? In 1917 when he was 63 (and married), Janácek met and fell in love with Kamilla Stösslová (also married), some 38 years his junior. Despite all evidence pointing to the fact that the composer’s love was unrequited, more than 700 letters to Stösslová were discovered upon Janácek’s death in 1928, at which she was present.

In his final decade, she became his occasional companion and unwitting muse, inspiring such characters as Kát’a Kabanová, Vixen Sharp-Ears, Emilia Marty, and Zefka, the earthy, seductive gypsy in Zápisník zmizelého (The Diary of One Who Disappeared), a song-cycle which I have seen staged several times and consider to be perhaps the single most romantic piece of music ever conceived.

In Vixen, Stösslová is also conjured by the drunken infatuation expressed by the Forrester, Schoolmaster, and Pastor with the (usually) unseen village girl Terynka, always out of grasp.

My love affair with the opera began with the 1981 New York City Opera production with fanciful designs by children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak with Gianna Rolandi as Vixen Sharp-Ears. I have subsequently seen productions at the Bregenzer Festspiele, Wiener Kammeroper, two productions at Prague’s Národní divadlo, and, most recently, Otto Schenk’s lovely 2014 production at Wiener Staatsoper, the company’s premiere of the opera, which opened six days after the veteran director’s 84th birthday. At 74, Heinz Zednik was persuaded to don the Rooster’s comb and plumes and strut his stuff in the barnyard.

The opera contains some of the most glorious music ever written, particularly the animal kingdom’s joyous wedding celebration for Vixen Sharp-Ears and the Fox which concludes the second act, and the transcendent final scene (which requires several handkerchiefs even when I listen to a recording of the music) in which the Forrester is overwhelmed by nature and the cycle of life. Janécek’s request that this scene be played at his funeral was honored when he died on 12 August 1928.