LEOŠ JANÁCEK 22 June - 1 July 2017 Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse Welcome Welcome to our production of Cunning Each year, Victorian Opera continues to Little Vixen. build its reputation for breaking boundaries and exciting collaborations. This work is from Janácek’s final The second half of our 2017 season years. He wrote it in 1924, preceding continues in this spirit, with productions The Makropulos Affair (1926) and his including our co-production with final work From the House of the Dead Malthouse Theatre of Tom Waits’ (1927). Janácek’s late style is unique, Black Rider, Copland’s Youth Opera an unlikely synthesis of Moravian folk The Second Hurricane as well as the elements, rhythmic complexity and world premiere of Gordon Kerry’s opera fluidity, hypnotic repetition and an The Snow Queen for Wodonga. individual take on the harmonic heritage of the 19th and early 20th century: From the entire Victorian Opera family, it’s spiky, sometimes unfriendly to thank you for joining us at the theatre for performers, but its gestures stay in the Cunning Little Vixen; a profound memory – they are like nothing else in meditation on youth, growing old and the operatic canon. the inexorable march of time – delivered without a trace of sentimentality but To guide this work, we extend the warmest with humour, pathos and great welcome to both Stuart Maunder AM life-affirming strength of mind. and Roger Kirk AM, both long standing members of VO’s extended family. It is a RICHARD MILLS AM particular pleasure to introduce the young Artistic Director, and very talented Jack Symonds, Artistic Victorian Opera Director of Sydney Chamber Opera, with whom we are collaborating on a number of projects. 2 3 Conductor's Message Jack Symonds In Cunning Little Vixen, Janácek, in his Jonathan Dove’s 1998 chamber orchestration 60s, took his still rapidly developing reveals to us both the economy and the compositional style to new extremes of virtuosity of Janácek’s conception. By expression. Vestiges of the conventions reducing a large opera orchestra to mostly (both musical and dramatic) of pre- single players, Dove exposes the sinuous 20th century operas are expunged and meshing of lines that drive the cycles of life replaced with a language as flexible, without omitting a single note. direct and passionate as it is original. To force unchecked Romanticism on this Most fascinating is Janácek's unique piece renders it almost incoherent musically approach to rhythm: Vixen presents (more damaging still in its even more a veritable labyrinth of patterns and astringent and idiosyncratic successors, speeds which when taken literally (as Vec Makropulos and From the House of has certainly not been the case in this the Dead), yet the lyrical generosity of work's performance history), create Vixen is unceasing and deeply touching. a multilayered sense of time quite in The extraordinary sound-images, such advance of anything written before as the poignant loneliness of the humans it. Often, the musical relationships in the final inn scene, and the eternally between miniaturised sections are reawakening forest at the conclusion completely irrational and constructed are made possible by a compositional sheerly out of instinct. language that boldly rethinks the syntax of every musical parameter, yet still remains profoundly engaging and moving for a large audience. JACK SYMONDS Conductor 4 5 Director's Message Stuart Maunder AM On the surface, Cunning Little Vixen is We witness two such cycles. That of an simple enough: a musical biography of a audacious vixen, and that of a Forester, fox based on a comic strip filled with furry a man on the wrong side of middle age, familiars. It could be seen as little more who over the course of the piece becomes than an opera for children – it’s based on accepting, wise and benevolent. All logic a comic strip and everything – but it’s tells us the Forester cannot understand the impossible to dismiss. It contains some little frog at the end of the piece, chirruping of the most moving music ever written, about the fact that his grandfather told him vivifying life’s most profound and eternal about the Forester, but the extraordinary truths. music prompted by this tiny moment illuminates the instinctive bond that exists Modestly described by the composer as between man and nature - a bond that in a “merry thing with a sad end”, Vixen is these days of climate change debate we a thing of wonder. The story unfolds as a ignore at our peril. series of seemingly illogical scenes that have little to no care for constraints of Of course, from a production perspective, time, location or the appropriate order of profoundly human as the themes are, we still seasons. Despite its episodic nature, one need to figure out how to present ‘Nature’ theme pervades: the cycle of life. on the stage. Ours is man-made. Human fashions and accessories are repurposed to create the host of vibrantly coloured animal characters. Similarly, manufactured materials are reinvented to create the natural world; Wood is bleached of its colour, processed if you like, steel tortured into trees, cotton woven into flat surfaces, those surfaces brought to brilliant seasonal colour by light. The animal world is as brightly coloured as a David Attenborough documentary - seemingly unnatural yet totally real. The human world on the other hand is monochromatic, thereby holding a magnifying glass to its vivid parallel world that is full of surprises and life for life’s sake. 6 ‘Nature’ is a big place and we are here for a short visit only. Its profound, gauche, simple splendour will always be here. Cunning Little Vixen was Janácek’s personal valentine to the human condition in all its inexplicable, maddening, fierce and beautiful inconsistency. The unexpected majesty, grandeur and emotion of the final sixty seconds of Vixen says it all. The essence of life is a mystery: we can’t fathom it, we can’t harness it, we can’t quantify what it is…but we all instinctively feel the unifying power of the indefinable force, much like music. Musicologists across the centuries have been able to explain the elements of music and how they might be organised, but they are unable to find an explanation for the soul-deep effect of this natural, mysterious, mighty and magical force. All the analysis in the world can’t tell us why, but with a fist pounding the heart we can all say: 'It gets you right here'. The end of Cunning Little Vixen has ‘got me right there’ from the first time I saw the piece as an 18-year-old student. Now, as an almost 60-year-old, that ‘there’ is still being ‘got’. STUART MAUNDER AM Director 7 Production Cunning Little Vixen 22 June - 1 July 2017 Chorus Arts Centre Melbourne Pásek Paul Biencourt Playhouse Mrs. Pásková/Lapák Lynlee Williams Composer & Librettist Leoš Janácek Tyrenka/Hen Danielle Calder Cockerel Running time is approximately 90 minutes Alexandra Ioan plus one 20 minute interval Chocholka Cristina Russo Creative Team Hen/Jay Diana Simpson Conductor Jack Symonds Hen Michelle McCarthy Director Stuart Maunder AM Hen/Woodpecker Belinda Paterson Set Designer Richard Roberts Hen Kerrie Bolton Costume Designer Roger Kirk AM Chorus Paul Hughes Lighting Designer Trudy Dalgleish Chorus Michael Lapiña Production Manager Eduard Inglés Chorus Kiran Rajasingam Stage Manager Marina Milankovic Children's Chorus Elise Stewart Deputy Stage Manager Cricket/Pepík/Fox Cub Sophia Wasley Katharine Timms Assistant Stage Manager Frog/Frantík/Fox Cub Lisha Ooi Principal Repetiteur Phillipa Safey Bee/Fox Cub Maia Hanrahan Repetiteur Jacob Abela Bee/Fox Cub Harmony Lee Chorus Preparation Phoebe Briggs Caterpillar/Fox Cub Maggie Orr Cast Dragonfly/Fox Cub Eliza O’Connor Vixen Celeste Lazarenko Grasshopper/Fox Cub Hayley Edwards Fox Antoinette Halloran Snail/Fox Cub Emilie Washington Forester Barry Ryan OAM Young Vixen Ruby Ditton Forester's Wife/Owl Dimity Shepherd Acknowledgements Schoolmaster/Mosquito Brenton Spiteri Jim Atkins, Soundsolo, Show Harašta Samuel Dundas Works, Resolution X, Baaclight. Badger/Parson Jeremy Kleeman Surtitles prepared by Jack Symonds. 8 Orchestra Victoria 1st Violin Trombone Kristian Winther* Bob Collins* 2nd Violin Susannah Ng* Percussion Viola Evan Pritchard* Susanna Low* Harp Cello Julie Raines* Josephine Vains* Keyboard/Celeste/Accordion(synth) Bass ** Dennis Vaughan Phillipa Safey Flute * = Guest Musician Rebecca Johnson * ** = VO Music Staff Oboe Stephanie Dixon * Clarinet Lawrence Dobell* Bassoon Matthew Angus* Horns Anton Schroeder* Raphael Salgado* Trumpet Tristram Williams* 9 © Roger Kirk AM 10 Synopsis Cunning Little Vixen ACT I The Vixen follows the Schoolmaster and the Parson as they stumble home. The The forest. How Vixen was caught. Schoolmaster mistakes her for Terynka, The Badger dozes in the afternoon sun. and is inspired to the make the single most The Dragonfly dances. The Forester passionate outburst of his life. The Forester pauses for a nap on his way home. While persistently hunts the Vixen through the he sleeps, the Cricket and the Caterpillar forest. give a concert. A young Vixen is exploring The Vixen finds a mate, and is soon the forest for the first time. The Forester obliged to marry. wakes, and seizes the innocent cub. The yard of the Forester’s cottage. The ACT III Vixen grows up in the Forester’s home. The forest. The death of Vixen. The Vixen endures the Dog’s sexual The poacher Harašta is going to visit advances, and defends herself vigorously Terynka, whom he is to marry. He finds a against the taunts of the Forester’s dead hare - one of the Vixen’s victims. The children. She is tied up. Forester warns him against poaching, and The Vixen dreams of her sexual awakening sets a trap for the Vixen.