Pocket Opera’s Staging of Janáček’s Vixen

The monument for Sharp Ears erected in Janáček’s home town of Hukvaldy (photograph by Kazuo Ikeda, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, from Wikimedia Commons)

Yesterday afternoon at the Legion of Honor, Pocket Opera presented the San Francisco performance of the latest installment in its 2024 season, Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. This opera, which explores the parallels between human nature and forest animals, requires a substantial cast, led by the title character (given the name “Sharp Ears”), sung by soprano Amy Foote. The cast also included two dancers, Bela Watson and Stephen Fambro, both with dual roles. The production was directed by Nicolas A. Garcia.

Those familiar with the venue know that its performance area is limited; and, in the absence of an orchestra pit, the musicians are required to perform in a narrow space behind the “action” on the stage. This layout could not accommodate the full extent of Janáček’s instrumentation techniques. Fortunately, Jonathan Lyness created an orchestration of the full score requiring only thirteen instrumentalists (four of whom played multiple instruments); and the Mid-Wales Opera was kind enough to share that score with Pocket Opera.

While the full cast accounts for a rich diversity of both animal and human personalities, the entire narrative revolves around Sharp Ears. As a child she is captured by the Forester (baritone Spencer Dodd); but it does not take long for him and his wife (mezzo Mary Rauh) to realize that she cannot be domesticated. By the time the vixen has matured at the beginning of the second act, she has her first encounter with the fox Goldstripe (mezzo Hope Nelson); and it is not long until the stage begins to fill up with five fox cubs. By the end of the opera, both the vixen and the Forester’s wife have died. However, the Forester encounters a frog, which turns out to be the grandson of a frog that appeared at the beginning of the opera, affirming that life goes on in cycles.

This makes for a rather elaborate plot line. However, Janáček’s score keeps the action moving, so to speak. The libretto, which was also by Janáček, was sung in a clearly-delivered English translation by Pocket Opera founder Donald Pippin. It was thus easy to negotiate the characters of the large cast and the rich extent of the action. My own quibble would be that an opera with such a rich abundance of imaginative content deserved a setting more conducive for the orchestra, the performers on stage, and (to at least some extent) the audience. Given the many challenges of financing, this is an ensemble that deserves deeper pockets!