A cute little heart breaker

Vixen Sharp-ears (Jana Castillo, pictured) pounces on an unsuspecting chicken (Barbara Paterson). Photo / Supplied

Two years ago, Auckland had a tasty sampling of Wellington's alt.opera scene when the capital's NIMBY Opera brought us its production of Good Angel, Bad Angel by New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell.

NIMBY have returned north with Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen, touring an opera they describe as "a sexy, comic and sometimes revolutionary romp through the Czech countryside, with the irrepressible Vixen Sharp-ears" to Auckland, Kerikeri, Hamilton and Tauranga.

Free of the gloom and despair that permeate so much of the composer's operatic vision, this wry, touching allegory, which parallels the lives of man and beast in the Bohemian woodlands, was inspired by a comic strip that appeared in Janacek's local newspaper, telling the story of a vixen, raised by humans and escaping to raise a family in the forest.

Director Jacqueline Coats has secured a reputation around the country for productions ranging from Mozart and Salieri to a number of short New Zealand works. She has also been involved in a number of NBR New Zealand Opera stagings, including last year's The Italian Girl in Algiers.

For Coats, Janacek's music offers "an immediate entry into the piece".

"He gives you things in the music that tell you what's in the forest and what's in the character's emotional journey as well."

She stresses there are no easy answers as the opera is "more of an exploration of life and love and nature, and all those kinds of things".

If there is any answer, the animal characters have found it. "They just accept life for what it is," Coats explains. "Things happen, you deal with them, move on and then life goes on through your offspring. They don't sit there and stew about things.

"All the human characters in the opera are completely miserable. They sit around in pubs getting drunk, moaning about not getting love and not doing anything about it."

The cast of 12 is headed by the cream of NBR New Zealand Opera's Emerging Artists, including Kate Lineham in the title role, Matthew Landreth as the Forester, Barbara Paterson as the Fox, Barbara Graham as the Frog and Daniel O'Connor as Badger and Parson. All, where required, have responded enthusiastically to exploring the animal within.

"They're still in 40s-feel human costumes, but with animal bits and pieces," Coats says. "The real difference happens when they move because our choreographer Sacha Copland has worked at everyone coming through with a different movement style, according to their particular animal. It's a very physical production and they really throw themselves about."

Writhing and bounding about while doing justice to Janacek's often tricky lines is a challenge for the singers and Coats herself enjoys working within the constraints of a musical score.

"You may have your rhythms set down and emotional path in place, but it's amazing just how much interpretation you can add."

Justus Rozemond is the man in charge of the music. Originally from Holland, he moved to New Zealand in 2001 and relinquished a career as a geophysicist in the oil industry to take up a musical career.

Rozemond has pared down Janacek's vivid orchestration to piano and four instruments and admits, with a dry laugh, that "you really get to know a score after you've made an arrangement of it". While Catherine Norton's piano provides continuity, the other instruments catch Janacek's many evocations of nature, including "a little riff on E flat clarinet which is the early morning call of the rooster".

Above all, he stresses the immediacy of this music. "In 1924, Janacek was concerned that so much contemporary music at that time was alienating audiences but Cunning Little Vixen is very accessible and understandable, even though it is definitely of the 20th century."

Performance

What: The Cunning Little Vixen
Where and when: Maidment Theatre, Auckland, Wednesday; The Centre, Kerikeri, Friday; Clarence Street Theatre, Hamilton, Monday February 1; Baycourt Exhibition Space, Tauranga, Wednesday, February 3. All performances at 7.30pm.