Byre Opera presents Janácek's The Cunning Little Vixen

Byre Opera, the opera company of the University of St Andrews presents Janacek’s masterpiece The Cunning Little Vixen. The company showcases the best of the University of St Andrews’ vocal talent in otherwise entirely professional productions. Cunning Little Vixen also features a number of local children who play specific animals. This new production is directed by Scottish Opera Performing Arts Fellow PJ Harris who, together with set and lighting designer Victor Labarthe d’Arnoux and costume designer Antonin Boyot-Gellibert,have created a magical woodland world to accompany Janacek’s beautiful folk-inspired music. Boyot-Gellibert’s costumes for the many animals are inspired by origami designs and the opera will be accompanied by an ensemble consisting of some of Scotland’s finest orchestral musicians under the direction of Michael Downes.

The Cunning Little Vixen, composed in the 1920s, is based on a serialised novella published in a Prague newspaper of the time, ostensibly about a Forester’s hopeless attempts to domesticate a young vixen but with strong political overtones and observations of broader themes connected with life cycles and death. Regarding Byre Opera’s production, director Harris comments “We have set this piece in a contemporary forestry world, where it seems there is a real tension between working for nature and adhering to political economics. Our production charts the journey of the Forester as a man who has become part of an economically-orientated political system to a man who discovers real meaning and value in life through the beauty and power of nature.”