San Francisco Classical Voice

The opera ends on the interior sense of the man: the Vixen has been killed and the Forester, in a sunlit evening, muses on his honeymoon long ago, singing "Is it a fairy-tale or true," and falls asleep. Dreaming, he sees the Vixen's kit, looking just like its mother, and then a little frog (grandson of the one that hopped on his face at the opera's beginning). He strolls towards the sunset in an ending that affirms the cycle of life, death and renewal.

We have long since become enchanted. Janácek's music directs the constantly shifting focus between the realm of the animals and the homely human side — the Forrester, his wife (Judith Christin), the Innkeeper and his wife ( (John Duykers, Jennifer Lane), the Schoolmaster (Anthony Laciura, tenor), Parson (Gregory Stapp, bass), Harašta, the Poacher (Bozan Knezevic). Janácek's music can change in mood and characterization instantly, sharply and often because he composed, not in large scene-size structures, but in panels. Each musical section is generated from its own motive, repeated, repeated, repeated, setting up a surge that carries that section. It also lays a path for the minimalism of some 70 years later. All is richly harmonized and orchestrated (in the Romantic style) and peculiarly expressive of the dramatic moment.

Janácek generated his musical material from the rhythm and melody of the Czech words. That's why his musical language sounds so different from traditional western opera style and why his operas can't be performed in translation, or shouldn't be, and had better be conducted by one with a feeling for Czech. In command of the Janácek idiom, the SF Opera's conductor for The Cunning Little Vixen, Alexander Polianichko, led a compelling performance, the orchestra playing this difficult score handsomely. The cast, in the main, Americans, were well-drilled in Czech. Though the opera was conceived in three acts and customarily done that way, in this production it was played effectively as one continuous piece, sweeping us along.

The few big solos ( not arias) are the Vixen's. Upshaw sang gloriously, as when the Vixen denounces the hens for their subservience and acceptance of exploitation. (Janacek was, for his day, a social revolutionary).She was again sparkling in the scene with the young Fox, a compressed and volatile courtship of two innocents. The swaggering, boyish Fox was Dagmar Peckova, Czech high mezzo soprano, keen in musicality and a vivid actress. In the amusingly short time theatrical fantasy makes possible, he becomes parent of their 15 kits, and whammo, they're married, a crowd of animals in attendance

The opera switches from such scenes to the homely Czech pub and the clumsy verbal jousting of the Forester and the bumbling Parson (Stapp) as they pick on each other and on the pitiable, lovesmitten Schoolmaster (Laciura). By contrast with the humans, Vixen Sharp-Ears is the one unbending, consistent character, true to her nature. Upshaw plays up the Vixen's strength and cunning (the Vixen's resolute feistiness in the Forester's barnyard and her escape), her charm (the delightful "romance" with the Fox), her spirit (recognizing the trap set by the Forester, facing off the Poacher before he shoots her). Upshaw moved in a lithe, springy fashion and her voice gleamed throughout the opera.

The set, designed by Robert Innes Hopkins, and Daniel Slater's stage direction took the opera out of the fantasy animal show genre and placed it in the hard-edged reality of a 1970s human environment, post Prague Spring. Chairs and tables were ever-present. Humans were costumed in clothes of that period. There is the scruffy Czech pub with peeling wall paper where the Forester sees the red-haired Terynka, later to become confused in his fantasies with the Vixen. There is the Forester's house and barnyard where the captured Vixen is tormented, then taunts the grotesquely stuffed hens sitting in tiers. A light goes on over each of their heads signaling the laying of an egg.

The animals in the opera wear clothes not animal costumes, their identities signified by amusing, stylized elements — found objects affixed to their heads or bodies. The lead animals are the Badger (Peter Strummer) whom the Vixen dispossesses by fouling his den, the Dachshund and Woodpecker (Catherine Cook), the Cock (Ann Panagulias) whom the Vixen neuters, biting off his codpiece.

The dominant feature of the production is the architectural design. Ten large arch-like frames stacked from front to back lead upstage, each about nine feet deep and pierced with two large portholes. They are moved independently, side to side and are covered with a wallpaper design of leaves. Late in the opera, these frames shift so that the legs of the arches overlap to form a stylized forest. Finally they are aligned to form a great tunnel leading to a blue sky upstage, towards which the Forester walks. It is symbolically effective, a visually striking end to a striking, deeply impressive evening.