Journey into a world of magic

Laughter and a comic strip triggered inspiration for opera The Cunning Little Vixen'

- MICHAEL CRABB

Those who make operas seek inspiration from varied sources but rarely from a comic strip. This, nevertheless, was the starting point for Moravian composer Leoš Janácek's "The Cunning Little Vixen," one of the 20th century's most idiosyncratic, fantastical and enchanting operas, whose reflections on humanity's place within the wider world of nature have pressing, timely resonance in an age of environmental degradation and global warming.

The compact three-act work-little more than two hours including one intermission has not been staged by the Canadian Opera Company in more than 25 years, but now makes a long-overdue return in a bold new production from English National Opera by 32-yearold Jamie Manton, a rising star among British stage directors.

In composing such other much-admired operas as "Kat'a Kabanová" and the posthumously premiered "From the House of the Dead," Janácek worked from conventional literary sources but, so the story goes, it was the laughter of his housekeeper that triggered the creation of "The Cunning Little Vixen." In the spring of 1920, Marie Stejskalová was looking at a newspaper featuring a popular serialized graphic novella by Rudolf Tesnohlídek, itself inspired by Czech artist Stanislav Lolek's charming late-19th-century drawings of animals wild and domestic and of the countryfolk who hunt and tend them. Janácek looked for himself and was captivated.

Tesnohlídek had fashioned Lolek's drawings into the story of a female fox, "Sharp Ears." The composer read the entire serial and adapted it into a libretto that, while superficially chirpy and amusing, is philosophical in its underlying ruminations on the cycle of life, death and renewal.