The Cunning Little Vixen at Opera Holland Park review - a sweet and bright naïve delight

This family-friendly production of Janácek’s celebration of nature is perfect for London’s greenest opera house
The children’s chorus
Ali Wright
Barry Millington14 July 2021

What opera could be more appropriate for the green space of Holland Park than Janácek’s celebration of the renewal of nature The Cunning Little Vixen? Stephen Barlow’s homespun production, designed by Andrew D. Edwards, is naïve in the best sense, with a handful of amusing contemporary references thrown in, and offers an enjoyable evening for an opera-starved audience.

Not only has the auditorium seating been reconfigured, with some handsome removable chairs, but the stage area is also now wrapped round the semi-sunken orchestra pit, affording extended slopes for children in animal costumes, vixens harassing cocks and hens and themselves being tormented by foresters and poachers.

Natasha Agarwal as Lapák the dog and Jennifer France as The Vixen
Ali Wright

So alive and reverberant are the acoustics in this redesigned auditorium – surprisingly so, given the canopied sides and roof – that Jonathan Dove’s skilful chamber version fills the space more than adequately with sound. The scene in which the captured Vixen dreams of freedom failed to melt the heart, and perhaps a warmer body of strings would have helped here, but this was a performance generally notable for its edgy sonorities and spiky rhythms. The conducting of Jessica Cottis was spirited and stylish.

There is a nod in the direction of the podium when the Vixen is told (in a translation based on Norman Tucker’s standard version) how she would be memorialised by men writing stories and women conducting operas about her. Other nice updated touches include the Vixen being brought her breakfast in a Prêt à Manger bag, and an in-joke for Opera Holland Park habitués about sleep being disturbed by the peacocks (‘flies’ in the original).

Julia Sporsénas The Fox and Jennifer France as The Vixen with the Opera Holland Park Chorus
Ali Wright

Jennifer France was a bright-toned, vivacious Vixen, courted by the impassioned Fox of Julia Sporsén. Grant Doyle was a rough-hewn Forester while the show was stolen by the stand-in Poacher of Ashley Riches. John Savournin, managing a nifty change from Badger to Priest, was particularly effective in the latter role where he continued to badger his flock with moralising homilies. The smaller roles of Lapák the dog and the Schoolmaster were well taken by Natasha Agarwal and Charne Rochford.

Fox and vixen snuggle suggestively but decorously under a blanket in this family-friendly production. But their offspring returns at the end for another round with the Forester, who promises to be less trigger-happy than before. The sunlit final scene, in which fallible humans are transfigured by radiant nature, is tellingly evoked in the coloured lighting (designed by Rory Beaton) that floods the auditorium.

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