The Cunning Little Vixen

Opera by Leoš Janáček

AMSERV presents:

Opera by Leoš Janáček
Libreto by Leoš Janáček after Rudolf Těsnohlídek’s serialised novella “Adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears”
World premiere on November 6, 1924 in National Theatre Brno
Premiere in the Estonian National Opera on January 30, 2026

Music Director: Arvo Volmer
Conductor: Kaspar Mänd
Stage Director: Priit Võigemast
Designer: Rosita Raud (Estonian Theatre for Young Audiences)

Janáček found the original subject for the piece in Rudolf Těsnohlídek’s newspaper serial story, inspired by Stanislav Lolek’s cartoon strip consisting of more than 200 pictures. The composer detailed the adventures of a clever fox cub. She is captured by the local Forester, grows up on his farm, and then escapes back to the woods to raise a family.

Human beings, like vixens, are born, grow, marry and die. Janáček illuminates for us the cycles of life and nature, and at the same time, he shows us archetypes of the morality of the humans who cannot accept those cycles – and the road by which one human eventually can. It is by far his sunniest stage work and its inbuilt anthropomorphic joke of animals behaving like humans leads to many moments of pure comedy.

The dramatic modes with which the composer experiments – the unique blend of dance and song, the strange mixing of animal and human worlds, the cinematic succession of tiny scenes – were advanced for their time and the opera had to wait many decades to win over audiences and critics. The opera teems with playfulness, humour, wildness, love, sorrow, wisdom – simply full-blooded life.