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CHAPTER 3

SHARP-EARS-THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN

Introduction
The Story of Act I
1. How the vixen Sharp-Ears was caught
2. Sharp-Ears in the farm-yard of the forester’s lodge.
3. Sharp-Ears as a politician and 4. Sharp-Ears makes her escape.
The Story and Music of Act II
5. Sharp-Ears lays claim to someone else’s property.
6. Sharp-Ears gets herself talked about.
7. Sharp-Ears plays tricks.
8. Sharp-Ears is wooed and won.
The Story and Music of Act III
9. Sharp-Ears gets the better of Harašta, the poacher.
10. Sharp-Ears meets her death.
11. Sharp-Ears’s pelt provides a muff for Terynka.
12. Life is renewed in Sharp-Ears’s cubs.

Introduction

There have been plays with animals among the dramatis personae from the time of Aristophanes to that of Ionesco.

When there is a mixed cast of animals and humans, problems of the relative size of both will arise acutely in any stage presentation, and every producer of Midsummer Night’s Dream has to contend with, and attempt to balance, the height of humans and fairies, particularly when the effect of tall fairies and short humans, presented simultaneously on a small stage, can be ludicrous

Janáček’s ninth opera, The Cunning Little Vixen is a kind of Czech Midsummer Night’s Dream with almost insoluble problems in this direction: for instance, in the opening scene, the forester falls asleep and a frightened little frog jumps up and lands on his nose: a few minutes later the forester catches a baby vixen, picks her up like a dog by the scruff of the neck and examines her triumphantly. Both frog and vixen are singing parts.

Little wonder then that most productions of this opera have been clumsy to look at. After the première of the opera at the Brno National Theatre on 6 November 1924, the very able critic and early biographer of Janáček, Vladimír Helfert, suggested that the opera could be improved by eliminating all the human characters and making it entirely an animal opera-probably for this very reason. One feels it would require the delicate fantasy of a Walt Disney in another medium to do justice to the visual presentation of this poem of brotherhood between men and animals, where both live in equality with one another in a part dream, part real world. Yet this miracle has been all but accomplished on at least one occasion-on the stage of the Berlin Komische Opera, May 1956, in Walter Felsenstein’s remarkable production.

The Cunning Little Vixen was born in a newspaper office: the literary editor of the Brno paper Lidové Noviny, Dr. Bohumil Markalous, saw in the studios of the Prague artist, Stanislav Lolek, a series of comic animal drawings which the editor took to another member of the Lidové Noviny staff, the writer Rudolf Tesnohlidek, and asked him to write a running commentary in verse on the pictures which, later, he expanded into a novel.

This early attempt at what we would now call a comic strip appeared in serial form in the supplement of Lidové Jyoviny in 1920 and was seen by Janáček who was a regular reader of the paper. The central figure is a smart little vixen called LiŠka Bystronožka (sharp paws) by Těsnohlídek: owing to a printer’s error, however, it appeared as LiŠka BystrouŠka (sharp ears), which the author thought an equally good name and left at that.

One is reminded that a misreading of the restored Buchner manuscript resulted in a similar mistake in the title of the play and opera-Wozzeck instead of Woyzeck.

Tesnohlidek later published an account of his meeting with Janáček- "the youthful sage"-as he called him. He began by saying that it never occurred to him that his comic-strip story might have not only a reader but an admirer in the "man with silver hair and sparkling eyes" who wished to translate into music the trivial words and even more trivial actions of the smart little vixen. At first he thought someone was playing a joke on him but, on receiving a direct invitation from Janáček, he went-in fear and trembling, he tells us-to meet and discuss with the composer the question of turning his animal stories into an opera:

"Leos Janáček was waiting for me in the small garden of the conservatoire. He sat among the bushes, with thousands of tiny blossoms shining round his head; that head of his was equally white, and seemed to be the biggest of those flowers. He smiled; and I immediately knew that this is the smile which life presents to us like a gold medal for bravery in the face of the enemy; for bravery in sorrow, adversity and hatred. At that moment I believed that vixen Sharp-Ears was sitting, tamed and quite dominated by the kindness of the man in the small garden, and that she would approach unseen to sit at our feet and listen to our plotting. Janáček mentioned the story in a few words and then began talking about the forest at his home in Wallachia which I do not know. He talked about his studies of birds chirping and I realised that he knew the happiness contained in his smile." (* Quoted in Stedron’s collection: Letters and Reminiscences of Leos Janáček (translated by Geraldine Thomsen), Artia-Prague, 1955, p. 164.)

Janáček had gone holidaying in the Tatra Mountains in July 1921, and had written how he would like to sing the praises of the majestic mountains, the soft tepid rain, the frozen peaks, the wild flowers blooming in the valleys, the song of birds, the joyous undercurrent of animal life in the forest. On such excursions into the country he usually stayed at a forester’s house and it is from these deep-felt experiences of nature in the forests of Hukvaldy, Luhačovice and Adamov that he drew the inspiration for this, the most loveable and melodious of all his operas.

He had finished writing the libretto by the autumn of 1922, by which time he had probably already written part of the music, for according to Stedron, the score was completed by 17 March 1923. Janáček’s libretto is written in the Lisen (Brno) dialect and consequently is by no means easily accessible to Prague singers and audiences, in much the same way as the poems of Robert Burns in the Ayrshire dialect are puzzling to many English readers. In both cases there is a picturesque attraction, once the characteristic cadences of the languages are appreciated.

Janáček took the principal incidents in the picture-story serial of Lolek-Tesnohlidek, gave each a descriptive subtitle and strung them together into a more or less connected narrative, although a close examination will reveal inconsistencies, discrepancies and a general looseness of construction. Janáček’s great propagandist and friend, Max Brod, made an earnest and well-intentioned attempt to improve on the original text in his German adaptation and transcription of the libretto, published in the Universal Edition of the vocal score. Although a few ideas of Brod still persisted in the recent Felsenstein and Sadler’s Wells productions, Brod’s version is now generally discarded (it certainly always has been in Czechoslovakia) as showing little understanding of the true nature of Janáček’s pretty forest fantasy. Interested readers should consult The Correspondence of Leos Janáček and Max Brod, Prague, 1953, and Vogel’s valid criticism of the Brod additions-particularly his excessive symbolism-on pp. 288-92 of his book.

Compared to the psychological conflicts, the emotional stresses, the turbulence of text and music in Janáček’s last two operas, and the tremendously realistic, dramatic human operas which preceded it, The Cunning Little Vixen stands out as something entirely different: a pastoral symphony, a sincere and touching tribute to mother-nature, an almost Buddhistic hymn in praise of the basic unity of all living creatures. There are nature sequences in other Janáček operas but only in The Cunning Little Vixen does the composer give the fullest expression to his love of nature in terms of poetry and fantasy. In the forest sequences Janáček’s characteristic explosive musical prose writing is replaced by smooth, evenly balanced rhythmic phrases. Continuous melodies which are often repeated and have a ballet-like simplicity and shape replace to a large extent the usual short epigrammatic motifs, although this technique is still employed in the human scenes of the opera.

The Story and Music of Act I

The first act consists of four short adventures:

1. How the vixen Sharp-Ears was caught.

2. Sharp-Ears in the farm-yard of the forester’s lodge.

3. Sharp-Ears as a politician.

4. Sharp-Ears makes her escape.

1. HOW SHARP_EARS WAS CAUGHT

The scene is part of a dark, dry wood, bathed in summer sunshine. In the background is the den of a badger. When the badger sticks his head out, we see that he is smoking a long meerschaum pipe. Flies circle around him, a baby fox is curled up asleep, other small animals are seen. The blue dragon-flies weave around one another in the light swift movements of an ethereal dance.

The opera begins with the gently rocking No. 81 tinged with a drowsy melancholy-

No 81

Insect chatterings and chirpings continue (sec A of 81). We may be sure that these and the innumerable other animal voices and cries in the opera are as they sounded in the ears of Janáček during his forest sojourns, for he could write in musical notation the melody curves of a waterfall.

The gracefully lilting No. 82 falls into regular five-bar phrases and is the theme for the dance of the dragon-flies.

No. 82

No. 81 reappears making a compact A B A prelude.

At the first sound of the forester’s arrival, the badger crawls into his den and the dragon-flies and other insects and the small animals quickly disappear. The forester is out of breath, has been drinking too much, is drowsy and feels like taking a nap in the shade. If his wife should ask questions he can always say he has been after poachers: he feels as tired as he did after his wedding night. Taking the gun from his shoulder, he becomes sentimental over it, calling it his trusted companion, his only real sweetheart, for a gun neither talks back nor nags him, which, one presumes, cannot be said of his wife. He falls asleep.

At his first approach the animals are startled and vanish quietly to No. 82. A vague arpeggio figure accompanies his opening speech.

A cricket and grasshopper enter to suitable insect noises-

No. 83

The grasshopper has round his neck a small barrel-organ and, as soon as the forester is asleep, the cricket asks him to play a tune. The grasshopper agrees but tells the cricket not to expect too much from him: he knows only the old tunes. In the charming and delightful ballet sequence which ensues, the main theme is this delicate spidery waltz tune.

No. 84

The theme is followed by two variations and appears in regular phrases of eight and four bars. The cricket dances with a mosquito who flies on to the forester’s nose, takes a quick bite and itself immediately becomes tipsy (a little nibbling scale up and down on clarinets and cor anglais-see bottom of p. 12).

Other insects are flying about gaily and a little frog appears, and catches a gnat (graphically pictured in the last line of p. 13). Fearing a similar fate the mosquito backs away hurriedly, the little frog croaking "Bre-ke-te! "around it. The mosquito tells it to shut up and asks sarcastically where the frog was hiding when it thundered. A little vixen runs in and is taken aback at her first sight of a frog who, in turn, is frightened to death of the vixen. (The soft innocent lazy little whole-tone waltz tune.)

No. 85

The young vixen (Sharp-Ears) is unaware that she has strayed away from her mother and, staring at the frog, asks "mummy" if this is something good to eat. The terrified frog gives a hasty leap, landing on top of the forester’s over-red nose (a loud variant of No. 85 in the bass with excited chirpings in the treble).

The startled forester awakes, curses the cold, clammy frog and looking around him, spies the fox cub. It is the work of a moment for the experienced forester to seize Sharp-Ears, who wails painfully for "mummy"-hold her by the scruff of the neck and examine her. He is pleased at what he sees and intends giving the vixen to his children for a pet. The terror of the young Sharp-Ears is depicted in two snapping chords and the trill turn and arpeggio figure-

No. 86

The descending arpeggio (A of 86) generates many other motifs: see Act II, at figures 2, 6, 8, 10, 11, 17, 18 and elsewhere.

The forester slings the gun over his shoulder and goes off laughing. After a moment’s silence the blue dragon-fly reappears searching in-vain for her little friend the fox-cub (flute solo and cadenzas alternating with A of the dragonfly’s tune No. 82 on a solo violin in very delicate and sensitive musical tracings).

Other dragon-flies and insects appear and dance together to a repeat of the music of the previous dragon-fly ballet: gradually the dragon-fly companion of Sharp-Ears gives up hope of finding her little friend and sadly folds her wings (to a transformed No. 86) as the orchestra gently repeats bars 1 and 2 of No. 81 with the sad little A of No. 86 underneath as a cor anglais solo.

The sunlight fades and only the shadows of trees are to be seen, as the scene ends with the same soft melancholy music of the opening. The singing parts of frog, mosquito, cricket, grasshopper and baby vixen should be those of young children with thin, piping voices.

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