The Cunning Little Vixen

Coliseum, London                                                                                     Until March 1

Rating:

 This is arguably Janacek’s masterpiece. His extraordinary life meant that, had he died in his early 60s, he would have had little reputation.

Dying in 1928, aged 74, after a string of late successes, Janacek is now regarded as one of the great 20th Century opera composers.

Vixen was a strip-cartoon novella serialised in a local paper. It completely captured Janacek’s imagination. Why? I believe because of its obsession with death, renewal, and the indifference of Earth to the sufferings of those put upon it.

The humans and the animals live, and then they die, and the seasons continue inexorably along their pre-determined path.

The animals pass their time in as carefree a way as possible, but suffering and death is never far away.

It’s interesting that the Vixen (Sally Matthews) is shot dead at the moment of her greatest happiness with her new husband (Pumeza Matshikiza) and her cubs. This was an addition made by Janacek himself.

The humans are a sorry bunch, frittering their lives away, like the Schoolmaster and the Priest (fine cameos from ENO stalwarts Alan Oke and Clive Bayley).

All this is so obvious you would think everyone would get it. But not, apparently, director Jamie Manton. He feels it needs a new idea, and that is logging. So everywhere there are piles of logs over which the cast have to clamber.

One wants to scream in frustration, it’s so tedious and ugly. Particularly since the setting is backstage (why?), so the beauty of nature, an essential element in Janacek’s magical score, goes for nothing.

The orchestra plays well under Martyn Brabbins, though he has little obvious feeling for Janacek’s idiom. And the cast performs well too, especially Lester Lynch’s Forester.

But this is a deeply depressing evening, and a betrayal of ENO’s heritage. ENO, as Sadler’s Wells, gave Vixen its first British outing in 1961 and there then followed many triumphant Janacek evenings under Sir Charles Mackerras, including a fine Vixen from David Pountney.

I went on the fourth night and the place was almost empty. The public won’t be fooled.