Wagner - Die Walküre (London, 2021)

Richard Wagner - The Valkyrie (London, 2021)

English National Opera, 2021

Martyn Brabbins, Richard Jones, Matthew Rose, Rachel Nicholls, Nicky Spence, Emma Bell, Brindley Sherratt, Susan Bickley, Nadine Benjamin, Mari Wyn Williams, Kamilla Dunstan, Fleur Barron, Jennifer Davis, Idunnu Münch, Claire Barnett-Jones, Katie Stevenson

The Coliseum, London - 19th November 2021

The announcement of a new Ring Cycle at the Coliseum was welcome news for many opera goers and followers of the English National Opera. It was a sign that new Artistic Director Annilese Miskimmon had some creative ideas to revive the fortunes of a company that has recently been going through some difficult times. The news was also greeted however with a certain amount of caution and indeed even trepidation by those who had been to see director Richard Jones's previous Ring for Covent Garden, or indeed any of his productions. There was little here to suggest that Jones would be a natural fit for Wagner.

Still, that doesn't have to be an essential quality and sometimes it's useful to get another perspective where the Der Ring des Nibelungen is concerned. While it's perhaps a little too early to look for any distinctive ideas or themes emerging, some of those concerns do appear to be well-founded in this opening opera of the tetralogy; not least the fact that it's opening with Die Walküre - and following the ENO's dated ideals about English language performances it's of course The Valkerie - commercial imperatives perhaps necessarily superceding artistic considerations.

Those are the least of this production's concerns, although commercial considerations may have also been a factor in the set designs looking a little sparse and the ideas at this stage looking a little thin. One would think that being a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera in New York might have provided a few more resources, but considering the expense poured into the Met's last Ring Cycle - and continuing pandemic related problems -  caution may also have been the watchword there. Whether the concept is fully developed or not, and whether it is expanded on at all before it gets to the Met (it is surely too small scale for the Met), Jones's The Valkyrie looks like a work in progress.

There is always going to be something of a feeling of lack of completeness in any production of Die Walküre, and this Ring cycle hasn't even given us a Das Rheingold (or The Rhinegold) yet, but the problems here go deeper than that. Many of the great set pieces of this opera fell flat, with Act III suffering most in this respect. The horses ridden by the green raincoat wearing Valkyrie looked like the front half of a pantomime horse, the scene only saved by the combined singing strengths of the Valkyrie. Brünnhilde's fate to go out in a blaze of disgrace at the finale was scuppered by the Westminster council's refusal to allow naked flames to be lit on the stage of the Coliseum, but even with it I'm not sure that Jones would have pulled off the kind of spectacle needed.

For Richard Jones however it seems the limitations imposed, or self-imposed, is a chance to focus on the nuts and bolts of the drama, on the characters and the relationships between them. The idea of the cast wearing jeans and T-shirt type casuals is otherwise baffling other than it simply being an attempt not to distract or distance through traditional costumes of heroic mythology. With Wagner's music played for all its dramatic and emotional potential and some fine singing, the attention to character more than concept can pay dividends, and to an extent Jones succeeded in bringing in some tweaks to characterisation, but not on any level that would be considered insightful or revelatory.

The sets can best be described as functional and minimal, aligned to mood. A twisted ash breaking through the roof of Hunding's abode - a surprisingly small cabin rather than any kind of manor - was all that sat on the largely empty stage in Act I, with some shadowy figures hovering around to rotate the set now and again. The second scene of Act II consisted of a row of distorted trees and a few troughs of soil for the performers to run through. Each Act however concluded on a mostly bare stage with the concluding drama of the scene enacted in a circle of light. The dead heroes of the start of Act III were borne up to Valhalla on wires, to allow the Valkyrie their moment and clear the stage for the final non-conflagration.

It all played out fairly conventionally then with just little twists of emphasis on characterisation. Not even twists, just minor tweaks or injections of character and personality. Hunding was shown clearly to be an abusive brute to his wife, which enhanced the dangerous and distasteful side of his character and made his comeuppance feel truly merited. We also got excellent singing and performance to go along with this from Brindley Sherratt. Nicky Spence was labouring under a cold but showed little sign of it in another strong and consistent performance as Siegmund. His refusal to be transported to Valhalla without Sieglinde was heartfelt and absolutely heartbreaking. Emma Bell's also sang wonderfully, even if Jones failed to really get across the bond between her Sieglinde and Spence's Siegmund.

A Ring Cycle wouldn't be a Ring Cycle without some serious mishaps and problems and this one looks like having more than its fair share. Susan Bickley, cast as Fricke, was unable to sing at all, and had to walk through her role while it was sung from the wings by Claire Barnett-Jones, who took this on in addition to her role as the Valkyrie Rossweisse. This worked just fine. Matthew Rose was a capable and very demonstrative Wotan, striding onto the stage in Act II punching the air at the success of his plans in Act I, only to see them dashed soon after. This kind of dynamic set Wotan out as somewhat petulant, but a petulant god is still a fearsome thing, even one dressed as a lumberjack with his log cabin Valhalla.

It will be interesting to see why Giants are needed in the construction of a log cabin when it comes to producing Das Rheingold, but there were at least some promising hints of what could be done in the highly effective use of some eerily lifelike projections of Alberich during Wotan's recounting of the fateful incidents that set this downfall of the Gods into motion. It's an indication that much more could surely have been done to make this production more menacing and visually interesting.

Sung in English, the translation tried to strike a balance between colloquial and rendering of Wagner's old German poetics, so the delivery was inevitably a little awkward in places, although sung passages were such more successful at sounding closer to the familiar German. The perceived and forced limitations of the production and stage design aside - functional but with little in the way of this director's usual flair - this was however an otherwise enjoyable production of Die Walküre at least as far as musical and singing performances go. Martyn Brabbins's conducting drove the drama along purposefully with impact and emotional charge where required. Far from feeling like a complete opera in itself, the ENO's The Valkyrie at least offers hope that there is room for improvement and development by the time we get to performances of a full cycle.

Links: English National Opera

Barber - Vanessa (Glyndebourne, 2018)

Samuel Barber - Vanessa

Glyndebourne, 2018

Jakub Hrůša, Keith Warner, Emma Bell, Virginie Verrez, Edgaras Montvidas, Rosalind Plowright, Donnie Ray Albert, William Thomas, Romanas Kudriašovas

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

I guess there are two ways of looking at Samuel Barber's Vanessa. On the one hand it's a rather reactionary, stuffy, old-fashioned romantic melodrama, that even in 1958 when it was composed was a backward look at a bygone age, a refusal to accept that music, drama and opera had moved on in a different direction. The other way to look at it is, well, that it's still all those things, but just to accept the work for what it is, an alternative approach that still embraces the traditional form, and respect it for the quality of its composition.

On a second viewing of this production however, I find myself similarly split on the quality and content of the work itself. On the one hand, a second closer listening does demonstrate that the work is not just a lush easy-listening composition in the style of a bygone age, but there are elements of dissonance within it hinting at darker elements that are not make explicit on the surface of the drama. The drama however doesn't stand up to close scrutiny on a second viewing and the observations it makes on love are really little more than banalities.

At its heart, that opera centres on a simple plot where Vanessa is expecting the return of Anatol, a former lover she has not seen in 20 years. It's not Anatol who turns up at their north country mansion however, but his son also called Anatol. Initially shocked, Vanessa however falls for the memory of her Anatol, not realising that the younger Anatol has already had an affair with Vanessa's niece Erika. Erika however has conflicted feelings for Anatol and doubts his love, but when she discovers she is pregnant by Anatol and that he and Vanessa are now engaged to be married, it causes a crisis and an attempted suicide.

What becomes clear is that if there is anything to be made of the suggestion of sinister undercurrents that Samuel Barber brings to Gian Carlo Menotti's libretto, it's all brought out by Keith Warner in his reworking of the drama and his impressive visual interpretation of things that are scarcely hinted at, never mind not explicitly brought out in the drama. Dressing it up as a Hitchcockian mystery really lends the work a lot more interest and intrigue than Vanessa seems to merit.

What prevents Hitchcock's films from appearing old-fashioned is the attention paid to the darker aspects of human nature. Barber and Menotti's characters have none of that depth, there's no insights other than those related to love, jealousy and unspoken, repressed passions. Warner seeks to use those vacancies of true personality and behaviour to hint at deeper mysteries and secrets. He wholly invents a mysterious and possibly taboo origin for Erika, he suggests another forbidden interracial romance affair in the past between the Old Baroness and the doctor as a young servant that is also regarded as taboo in the social order.

As much as Warner's production and reworking of the material works in favour of making Vanessa a little more interesting as a drama, from another point of view the period setting also works against it. The sheer elegance of the costume design, the period detail and the impressive technical approach are impressive, Warner using mirrors and projections to add layers, suggest hidden secrets, show reflections of the past and glimpses of forbidden passions behind the scenes. At the same time however, the period setting also serves to make it all feel horribly mannered and old-fashioned.

There's a scene early in the opera where Erika reads a passage from a romantic novel with little in the way of feeling. Vanessa snatches it and shows her how someone who has known love would express it. Barber appears to do the same with Menotti's libretto, ramping up the melodrama but never finding any true human feeling behind it. It appears that Keith Warner does much the same in this production for Glyndebourne, and makes the best possible case for what they believe is a neglected work. There is much to admire in the opera, but a second visit only reveals that it's all so much smoke and mirrors, and there's not really much depth to Vanessa at all.

The cast and the creative team would beg to differ and their belief in the work is evident not just from the performances and the high production values of this Glyndebourne 2018 recording, but they all make a strong case for it in the interviews included on the Blu-ray release. The opera also looks and sounds great in the High Definition presentation, with stereo and surround mixes that bring out that greater detail in Jakub Hrůša's conducting of Barber's score.

Links: Glyndebourne

Barber - Vanessa (Glyndebourne, 2018)

Samuel Barber - Vanessa

Glyndebourne, 2018

Jakub Hrůša, Keith Warner, Emma Bell, Virginie Verrez, Edgaras Montvidas, Rosalind Plowright, Donnie Ray Albert, William Thomas, Romanas Kudriašovas

Medici.tv - 14 August 2018

On the surface, Samuel Barber's Vanessa is a simple domestic drama, but inevitably there's much more going on beneath the surface. Written in 1958, Alfred Hitchcock was going something similar with repressed passions around that same time in Vertigo, and Keith Warner has chosen to stage the Glyndebourne production of Vanessa as a Hitchcock-like drama of hidden passions leading to disintegrating minds, and it's not a bad idea, even if it does have the consequence of making an unashamedly old-fashioned work feel rather dated.

But is it really a dated work or, like Hitchcock, does it not actually address something that was more than a little daring for its time in its subject matter and perhaps even taboo? Certainly a more personal reading of the matter of hidden passions and dark unspoken secrets can be detected in the libretto of composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who wrote the original libretto for his lover Samuel Barber, and it can be felt in the dark melancholic tone of the music. Keith Warner's direction doesn't address that directly at all in the Glyndebourne production, but he does delve a little deeper in a way that brings the human element out of the somewhat mannered and stuffy setting.

The sets, the moral attitudes and the class issues in Vanessa are all very much of their time. Vanessa lives with her mother and niece in an isolated mansion in the north of the country. Abandoned 20 years ago by Anatol, Vanessa has remained in Miss Haversham-like seclusion, with all the mirrors of the house covered. She is however expecting Anatol's imminent return, but is shocked to find that it is not Anatol who arrives, but his son, also called Anatol. Unknown to Vanessa, Anatol and her niece Erika spend the night together, but Erika refuses to marry Anatol and he turns his attentions instead to Vanessa.

The drama and the romantic triangle situation becomes rather more heated when it is revealed that Erika is pregnant. Hearing the news of Vanessa's engagement to Anatol, she attempts to throw herself in the lake late on a dark and snowy New Year's Eve. While Barber's lushly romantic score underpins the drama, it doesn't however allow it to tip over into melodrama, since while the revelations are shocking to the audience, they remain mostly hidden, repressed and covered up by the characters in denial; Erika about her feelings for Anatol, Vanessa about her suspicions about Anatol's true nature.

With much going on beneath the surface as above it, Keith Warner's direction finds expression for the multiple levels by highlighting the use of mirrors. Mirrors are referred to explicitly in the libretto, Vanessa has covered them up for 20 years since Anatol's absence, and they are covered up again at the end of the opera, and the significance of covering up and hiding from oneself is obvious. Warner's use of large mirrors that dominate the stage in Act I take on another dimension however when they are uncovered, playing on what is real and what is a reflection.

This is extended in Act II, when more mirrors are added and doubles are used, sometimes showing guests behind the scenes, other times showing younger idealised versions of the protagonists. This is most effective in the scene where the doctor, who has drunk a lot at the party, sees a ghostly younger, more gallant and much more confident idealised version of himself asking a lady to dance, that contrasts with the reality of the older, drunken man. But these levels and contradictions between what is spoken and the reality are all there in the music.

Aside from the Hitchcock references (the period looks much older than Vertigo, going back to Notorious or Suspicion), there are other film influences and effects evident in Warner's production, from the use of mirrors distorting reality and stretching to infinity like Orson Welles's The Lady from Shanghai, to the use of projections and a twisting set that almost replicates Hitchcock's reverse-zoom effect at the dramatic moment of Erika hearing of Anatol and Vanessa's engagement from the top of the stairs. All of the effects are merited and echoes in the score.

The music for Vanessa is beautiful, the melodies and arias are lovely, and even if there is a little too much talky recitative - which Menotti and Barber tried to avoid not entirely successfully - it is always musically expressive. The dark and moody 'goodbyes' conclusion is just wonderful and all of it is marvellously sung by a good cast. Emma Bell's conflicted and troubled Vanessa could easily have been upstaged by her rather more impetuous dramatic niece Erika, but sung tremendously well by Virginie Verrez, but Bell's interiority suggests more. Edgaras Montvidas is excellent as Anatol, singing the role persuasively, never playing a blatant cad, but rather more subtle than that.

With an elegant and expressive set, excellent singing and dramatic performances, good direction that attempts to dig a little deeper, this is an excellent performance of an entertaining and superbly constructed opera. Unfortunately, despite Glyndebourne's insistence that the time has come for accessible 20th century American opera, Vanessa still feels unadventurous and stuffy. It's a trend that is also becoming increasingly evident at Glyndebourne, but alongside ambitious productions like Barrie Kosky's production of Saul, Claus Guth on La Clemenza di Tito and Brett Dean's Hamlet, at the moment there's still a good balance in the festival and room for testing out lesser known American works like Vanessa.

Links: Glyndebourne, Medici.tv

Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Munich, 2016)

Richard Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2016

Kirill Petrenko, David Bösch, Wolfgang Koch, Martin Gantner, Robert Künzli, Benjamin Bruns, Emma Bell, Claudia Mahnke, Georg Zeppenfeld, Eike Wilm Schulte, Dietmar Kerschbaum, Christian Rieger, Ulrich Reß, Stefan Heibach, Thorsten Scharnke, Friedemann Röhlig, Peter Lobert, Dennis Wilgenhof, Goran Jurić 

Staatsoper.TV - 8 October 2016

I wouldn't say that Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an underrated work, but it's easier to come up with explanations why Tristan und Isolde or Parsifal might be considered above it as the supreme examples of Richard Wagner's craft and arguably even the apex of opera as an art form. Sometimes you just have to trust the evidence of what you are hearing however, particularly when this wondrous piece is played with as great sensitivity and attention to detail as it is here in the Bavarian State Opera's 2016 production in Munich under the direction of Kirill Petrenko.

What is great about the other two works lies primarily in their ambiguity and mystique, elusive qualities which of course are wholly within the intent and craft of the composer. Tristan and Parsifal are works that encompass human potential beyond the common experience, and as such they are works that are endlessly capable of being explored, adapted, reinterpreted and reimagined for new meaning as we continue to attempt to define and understand the conflicts between the physical, the divine and the spiritual aspects of what it means to be human and to aspire to something greater.

Set alongside those mythical works, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg's historical setting and concerns seem rather mundane, its message abundantly clear in a late opera from Wagner that actually has a story and dramatic interaction rather than long philosophical monologues. On the surface, it's a simple enough story of a young man's who attempts to win over the influential elders of a town so that he can marry the daughter of one of Nuremberg most influential citizens, Veit Pogner. He does this of course by winning a singing contest and becoming a Mastersinger with the help of the town shoemaker, Hans Sachs. It seems a simple enough story of respecting German Art and tradition, of impetuous youth learning from the crafts of their elders before embarking boldly on their own course in life.

There are however many different facets to the work, much more than the relatively singular themes of Tristan und Isolde or Parsifal. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is richer in melody and ideas, it has moments of warmth and humour, melancholy and joy, it has a generosity of spirit and reveals a side to the composer that you won't find in any of his other great works. It has something profound to say about love, music, society, art, tradition and people as a nation in the past and going into the future, and how all these things come together to define who we are. Most importantly, for a work about art and the human spirit, it exhibits all these qualities itself; the music, the drama, the sophisticated human observations and characteristics displayed in the opera themselves testament of the highest achievements of art and humanity.

Although its qualities and the subject it deals with are as relevant now as in the 16th century setting of the work, Meistersinger is not a work one would feel needs any distinctive interpretation by a director, but it's a complex work of interweaving personalities and themes with specific tones in its musical arrangements, and it certainly needs strong controlled direction. It's hard therefore to see much of the hand of David Bösch in the Bayerische Staatsoper production, but it's to the credit of the director that all those elements of the work come across in a way that doesn't feel the need to create shock effects or strive to impress an unwelcome character on a work that largely - I'll come to the tricky bit later - doesn't court controversy or seek to impress. The director nonetheless still manages to find a setting that embodies the essential quality of the work and touches on its deeper meaning in a basic and modern context.

Bösch's production does start out however looking a little like Katharina Wagner's controversial Bayreuth production, with the leather jacket and t-shirt wearing Walther von Stolzing looking like the punk upstart who is going to shake up the deeply reactionary Nuremberg establishment. He even smashes up a bust of the eminent 'master' himself after his first failed effort at mastersinging. While Katharina Wagner perhaps over-emphasised the point that a certain amount of irreverence and healthy disrespect can play, total anarchy is not the answer and not within the better nature of art as an expression of the human spirit. David Bösch's production strikes a much better balance in tone, particularly in how von Stolzing's character is measured against this production's Sixtus Beckmesser and Hans Sachs, whose position is equally as important to the tone of the work as a whole.

All the wealth of characterisation and mood that is inherent within Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (just listen to the music - hear the evidence of your own ears) is all there in this production. Any uncertainty about the direction it might have taken in Act I is banished by the almost overwhelming riches that are revealed in Act II. The set might be more modern - Hans Sachs working out of a mobile workshop in a dark rundown backstreet of a modern German city - but the arrangement is the familiar one and all the playful, romantic episodes and complications play out wonderfully. The graffiti on Sachs' van and street thugs wielding baseball bats only emphasise that this is a town that has stagnated and seen better days, one that is in need of spiritual renewal as much as urban renewal. Beckmesser's mugging is not a racial or antisemitic attack as much as him being a victim of the society that he and his like have fostered, ignoring the people, refusing to hear what they really need, holding on to outdated ideas.

Beckmesser is nicely characterised in this way. He's not overbearing and he's not weak either; he's not a caricature, but just a boring old man who is a bit full of himself and refuses to budge. He's the Marker who is keen to record the faults of others but not recognise them in himself, although his lack of self-confidence is evident and it betrays his true nature in the end. All this is vitally important in the light of how a director approaches the rather more problematic conclusion of this opera, and what one makes of Hans Sachs' 'Honour your German masters' closing speech. One of Wagner's most controversial moments, its tone can strike a wrong note after all that has come before it and remind one a little too much of the sentiments expressed in Wagner's work that would appeal to Hitler and the Nazis. It has to be handled right, and it has to be in the spirit it was intended, seen in the light of the time it was written, but still be acceptable and work - as it essentially must - in a modern context.

If there's truth in the characterisation and adherence to the nature of all that has come before it, it can be made to work. David Bösch's direction of the final act shows the inner meaning of Hans Sachs' speech and its dedication to art. All the solemnity and respect for art is there, there's humour and tolerance and recognition of all the love of beauty and expression of man's finer nature that is in Walther's Prize song. It is about glorifying art, of the supremacy of art as the highest expression of what it means to be human; a creative endeavour that works for the betterment of community. Wagner's great work generously expresses all these qualities and the work itself expresses everything that is wondrous about art and humanity. But it's also important to make the point that it's not for the old to sing the words of the new, as Beckmesser attempts. The old must make way for the new, and that is recognised with a violent conclusion that makes all the necessary impact. 

It's a joyous production then, one which fully embraces the richness and the true intent of this great work. The evidence of your own ears should also tell you this and dispel any prejudices you might have held against the work or misjudgements that it might not be as sophisticated and beautiful as some of Wagner's other mature operas, because Kirill Petrenko's conducting of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester is just phenomenal. The music sparkles with little flourishes and nuances, all of the detail brought out of the characterisation, mood and situation. There's no overemphasis on the Romantic, the melancholic or the dramatic - it merely gives voice to the complexity of those sentiments in relation to one another, with surges of emotion, the little hesitations, self-denials, holding back and letting go to revel in moments of joy and beauty which are often contained within all in those situations that generate contradictory feelings. This opera more than any other Wagner work anticipates Richard Strauss at his finest.

The singing is mostly wonderful, but even where it is lacking the full ability to tackle the demanding roles, the characterisation is strong enough to compensate. It's the opposite though for Wolfgang Koch as Hans Sachs. There's not a great deal of character detail in Koch's interaction with the others, but the role is sung well with a natural warmth in his voice. Martin Gantner likewise gives an unexpected warmth and lightness to Beckmesser without any sense of caricature or over-playing. His fate in the very last scene of this production does give you pause to think about his role in this society. Robert Künzli is a wonderfully lyrical Walther, but rather rushes the Prize song and fails to give it due feeling. Benjamin Bruns gives us a fine lyrical David and consequently brings rather more out of the role than is usually the case. Emma Bell struggled as Eva, I thought, in characterisation and in voice, but there were some good moments there. Claudia Mahnke's Lena and Georg Zeppenfeld's Pogner were noteworthy, as was Eike Wilm Schulte's Fritz Kothner.


Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV

Janáček - The Cunning Little Vixen

Leoš Janáček - The Cunning Little Vixen

Glyndebourne 2012

Vladimir Jurowski, Melly Still, Sergei Leiferkus, Lucy Crowe, Emma Bell, Mischa Schelomianski, William Dazeley, Jean Rigby, Adrian Thompson, Colin Judson, Sarah Pring

Opus Arte

With its charming depiction of life and nature, with the animals of the forest featuring throughout as characters, it’s common to see Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen staged like a pantomime and aimed at a younger audience, even though some of the behaviour of the creatures is indeed quite frankly “animalistic”. The opera is not of course essentially about animals but about life and, indeed, the facts of life, so it’s interesting to see the opera treated with a more mature outlook for the 2012 production at Glyndebourne. It may perhaps lose a little bit of its innocent charm in the process, but there’s more than enough gained from the usual fine attention that Glyndebourne give to the production - and the opera - as a complete package.

Rather than having children and older performers dressed in the usual colourful animal suits, the creatures of the forest are still characterised as animals here, but without the full make-up. Instead they carry only an object by which they can be identified, the idea seeming to be to remind us that their animal behaviour isn’t all that different from humans. A man holds an udder in his hand for the forester to milk, the dog, Lapák, holds a snake-like tail an shakes it about, the cockerel waves his dangly bits proudly and menacingly for the lady hens who are all in frilly lace underwear. As for the vixen, she’s dressed like a gypsy girl, in a woolly jumper with a hooped pattern, flowing gypsy skirt, trilby hat and scarf, with a shaggy mane of red hair, carrying a bushy tail and a hunter’s knife instead of sharp teeth. The characterisation is a bit of a half-way house and doesn’t always allow the anthromorphic elements to come fully to life, but combined with other elements of the stage setting, it does work to express the themes on a literal level as well figuratively.

The set itself places man both within this natural world and at the same time outside it, showing nature to be bold and colourful, while the indoors scenes - kept in the Janacek’s period and Moravian setting - are drab by comparison. Two features however dominate Tom Pye’s set designs that serve to bring those two different worlds together. One is a large winding path rising vertically at the back of the stage which at one time can be a path and at other times a burrow. It seems a little over-elaborate, requiring the use of stand-ins on harnesses, but it works. The other more significant feature however is a huge tree made up of a swirl of planks that alone functions as the strongest image and is at the centre of the stage for most of the production. It’s the one enduring constant that stands there throughout the seasons and the passing of generations, serving as a home for the birds, as a place to protect Forester from the sun while he sleeps, it’s where Sharp Ears the vixen is tied-up on the farm and it’s her shelter and home for her family later, made over into a den after the old badger has been driven out. Eventually, towards the end, even little saplings appear around the tree as well.

The strongest element of the production however, and the one that most eloquently describes the natural world it depicts, is undoubtedly Janáček’s music itself, which is wonderfully played by the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski. This gorgeous music - for me the most evocative and beautiful of all Janáček’s work - is almost achingly beautiful in its apparently simple rhythms. Not only does it flow however to Janáček’s familiar speech patterns and folk-like textures, but it’s also almost onomatopoeic in its capturing of the sounds, the rhythm and the flow of life, the passing of time and the eternal timelessness of nature. In its melodies also however it seems to mingle joy and sadness, beauty and cruelty, the spontaneity of living and the wisdom of ages. It’s undoubtedly this element that everything else must respond to in a production of The Cunning Little Vixen and, with only a few minor concerns, Melly Still’s direction - and particularly the beautiful choreography of the dancers - seems to respond to the music and its meaning as does the exceptionally fine performance of the orchestra conducted by Jurowski.

If there’s any one concern it’s a minor one about the pacing. Not the tempo. The rhythm and flow feel marvellous, but everything seems to fly past so quickly as if in a haste to get to the next scene, and it’s all over before you knew it. A bit like life I suppose - which may have been the intention. It’s true that The Cunning Little Vixen is not a long work and Janáček deliberately leaves no time for sentimentality about the natural order of things passing on and making way for renewal, but at the same time there seems to be little time in this production for you to connect with some of the most beautiful key moments and let them sink in. There may even be a few trims to the score to indeed prevent the audience from dwelling too long on events that ultimately are just another stage in the greater scheme of things, to be played out continually in the cycle of life.

This is particularly evident in the singing, which is fine throughout but tends to keep the singers - and consequently the audience - a little step removed from the characters, preventing them from really springing into life. Lucy Crowe however handles the complex Czech language requirements with its flow of consonants well, maintaining the necessary rhythm while performing fox-like moves very impressively. Emma Bell too sang beautifully and fitted well into the role of Golden Mane. There is perhaps rather more care given to the human figures, the Forester (Sergei Leiferkus) and his colleagues, and their disillusionment or sense of detachment with the true nature of the world - too caught up in themselves to see their part in the greater scheme of things. If the intention is to restore the human element back into a work where there can be too much emphasis placed on the cute antics of the animals, Melly Still’s production certainly manages that, and in conjunction with the overall tone of the production it works well, revealing all the magnificent beauty of one of the finest works in all opera, even if it loses just a little bit of its innocent charm in the process.

The production comes across reasonably well on the Blu-ray release. Some of the darker scenes have some post-production brightening applied, which creates a ringing halo around figures, but this isn’t evident in more than one or two scenes. Otherwise, the full colourful quality of the work is evident. The audio tracks are the usual PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1. Extras include a Cast Gallery and a 22-minute Making Of featurette, with interviews covering the concept, the music and the production design with some rehearsal footage. The BD is all-region, BD25 (for a 97 minute opera), with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.