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“Vixen” is Cunning Stunning Summer Fun
by Sherri Rase     |     Bookmark and Share
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Marie Lenormand, as the Fox, Isabel Bayrakdarian, as the Vixen, & company. Photo by Chris Lee

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Remember when Summer time meant playing and catching fireflies and dancing like the animals we were? This is the experience of the New York Philharmonic’s latest collaboration by Music Director Alan Gilbert and director/designer Doug Fitch, on Leoš Janá?ek’s opera “The Cunning Little Vixen,” which is destined for the success of their previous work. When one creative person is involved in a venture, it is likely to be good. With the team of creative power collaborating on this production, with the energy of a cast that is top to bottom and side to side talented, with an orchestra renowned for its talent, and the perfect set of evenings to perform on, and you have magic for opera buffs and those just seeing their first opera alike. The first of four nights—the June 22 performance—is considered here.

From the first strains of Janá?ek’s score, you are in a sylvan setting. The production was created by Giants are Small and GW Mercier and Doug Fitch’ sunflowers tower over the New York Philharmonic’s musicians whom, like conductor Gilbert, were dressed in an almost Buddhist monastic style. Augmented by the voices of New York Choral Artists and the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus, the effect is magic. The only thing missing was fireflies, and who has really seen them this early in summer?

The small woodland creatures begin to emerge and Fitch’s costume designs and Cookie Jordan’s make-up designs continue the magic. Karole Armitage’ choreography evokes the movement of frogs, grasshoppers, crickets, dragonflies, and more! My especial favorite was a butterfly on the stage extension, lovingly lit by Clifton Taylor’s design–I felt I was deep in the Forest Primeval, and the quality of the light limning this tiny Choleoptera seemed filtered through towering canopies.

Baritone Alan Opie’s Forester is truly an earthy man. If he’s not sleeping, feeling little remorse after concocting what seems less like an excuse and more like a premonition, he’s talking about his lost youth and everything that means. While he naps, tenor Keith Jameson, who is also the Schoolmaster, makes a memorable debut as a mosquito who sips from the vigor of the Forester. When he wakes, the Forester asserts his “right” in domain over the forest creatures and when he sees the young Vixen, he carts her off home to the kids—“she” belongs to him. The Vixen will share accommodations with his faithful dachshund, Lapak (mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor), whose doleful exchange with the Vixen may solidify her desire for Freedom.

The Forester’s Wife, contralto Melissa Parks, has a big picture hat and while she shares a color scheme with him, she’s his polar opposite. She prefers ordered nature to feral, as exhibited by her bevy of chickens. This fanciful Cock (Emalie Savoy) and “his” harem, Chocholka (Devon Guthrie), and their hens (Kirsten Kane, Helen Karloski, Margarita Martinez, Erica Powell and Elena Williamson) have a priceless moment. After her conversation with Lapak, Vixen Sharp-Ears (soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian) is feeling a bit down, and her fiery speech at first gets to her sisters, the hens, but she cannot resist her nature. SNAP-SNAP! After a bit of lusty mayhem among the fowl, Vixen escapes to the Forest.

The crusty, fusty Badger (bass Wilbur Pauley) attempts to control the woodland creatures, but is rebuffed and vanquished by Vixen. Badger’s human analogue is the Parson. This man, also dour, nurtures a scarred and battered heart beneath that rigid exterior. Passion hunted and caught him in youth, and he’s spent the rest of his life scourging himself for a moment of bad decision. The Parson, the Forester and the Schoolmaster at one point ruminate on love and this opera is like a snow globe–one background, but so much going on within. Juxtaposed with the joy of discovery Vixen is experiencing, it is circles within Venn diagram circles, overlapping just enough for spice.

Bayrakdarian’s portrayal of the Vixen has a truly gamine quality. She bewitches the Forester just by being, and when her human doppelgänger, the lithe and winsome Terynka (Emily Wagner), dances she bewitches all of the men of the village. Echoes of Terynka and Vixen swirl in their movements and again Armitage shows her genius as Terynka dances with the joie de vivre of youth, lissome, carefree and athletic all at once.

When Vixen tastes the forest, she falls in love. First she falls in love with her liberty and becomes drunk with her power over her own life. Bayrakdarian rolls with fox-like abandon, even while she stretches with sinuous femininity. When she locks eyes and hearts with a Fox (mezzo-soprano Marie Lenormand), the music they make is magical. The sonorous beauty of their love and music has the bittersweetness that is characteristic of Eastern Europe. The accents and beats within the music mirror the lyric assonance and dissonance of the languages found there, my opera companion suggested. Syncopated in translation, the lyrics are beautiful in the way that breaking the rules can be.

The colors are bigger than life, and so are the characters. Harasta (Joshua Bloom) is strolling through the forest in clothes black as shadows, betraying his poaching nature, and he is beautiful and as crafty as a fox. It is Fate, after all, that Harasta demands the ultimate sacrifice of the Vixen for his lady love–the much sought-after Terynka. It is Janá?ek’s way of showing that life is a circle without a beginning, without a true end.

Like life, this engagement is far too short. June 24 and 25 are the final performances. Taste the summer, taste your freedom. Get tickets and additional information at the New York Philharmonic Site: http://nyphil.org/concertsTicks/cunninglittlevixen.cfm





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