"I no longer have time to think about myself. In no year have I worked as much mentally as in this one," wrote the composer Leoš Janáček while he was working on The Cunning Little Vixen . The composition absorbed him completely, so meticulously did he try to translate the sounds of nature and the animal world into music. Janáček got the inspiration for the story about a young vixen who comes into contact with the human world from a newspaper comic. Nevertheless, The Cunning Little Vixen is not a playful fairytale opera, on the contrary. Two worlds collide, that of the animals and that of the humans. The community around the forester and his family as well as the other villagers is cruel and at the same time full of longing for a better life - but who has the answer to the question of what a real life is like? When the forester and the vixen meet in the forest, nature and apparent civilization come face to face. Thus, The Cunning Little Vixen explicitly shows no cute anecdotes about animals, but a pragmatic, uncompromising world in which it is all about survival. And yet there is room for the love between vixen and fox. Janáček succeeds in sounding out the animal in man and the human in the animal, thus holding up a mirror to us. Almost 101 years to the day after its premiere in Brno in 1924, Stephan Kimmig now turns his attention to an opera full of contrasts and the longing to find a place where one can live free of rules, following Der Prinz von Homburg and Das Rheingold . But does this place even exist?

The Cunning Little Vixen

Stuttgart Opera

With some pieces, you really need to feel the floor shake. Experience Janáček’s jubilant Sinfonietta, as 14 trumpets line up across the stage and Janáček’s salute to his hometown of Brno goes supernova in a blaze of glory. It takes a lot to follow Bartók’s Cantata Profana and Ravel’s astonishing Piano Concerto for the Left Hand - but if anyone can do it, it’s Janáček.

EPSG:4326

Stasevska conducts Ravel

Barbican Centre

Start your musical journey this January with Janáček’s immensely popular tragicomedy The Cunning Little Vixen. With short and pithy symphonic pantomime sections, inventively orchestrated to give each character their own rhythmic motif, this folksy suite is laden with lush harmony and a mood firmly drenched in nature and love.

Folk Tales & Fabled Love

Wales Millennium Centre

With his poetic opera The Cunning Little Vixen, Leoš Janáček brought nothing less than the eternal cycle of becoming and passing to the stage. It tells the life story of the young, rebellious vixen Bystrouška, or Sharp Ears, who is captured by the forester and starts a revolution at his homestead before she succeeds in escaping. Back in the freedom of the forest, she founds a family with a fox and is then shot by a poacher. The seemingly so civilized human world looks wistfully at wild nature, which follows its own laws of life and love.

Leos Janáček

Events

Upcoming events

Feb 28 - Mar 15, 2026

Das schlaue Füchslein · Staatsoper Berlin

May 2, 2026

Intimate Letters – Chamber Music Concert #3 · Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim

May 3, 2026

Visit to the nursing home: Intimate letters – Chamber music concert · Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim

Past events

Nov 9 - Dec 10, 2025

The Cunning Little Vixen · Staatsoper Stuttgart

Mar 12, 2025

Stasevska conducts Ravel · BBC Symphony Orchestra

About

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