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Moores School of Music: The Cunning Little Vixen

Presented by Moores School of Music at University of Houston - Moores Opera House

January 29-February 1, 2010

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The Moores School of Music at the University of Houston Moores Opera presents The Cunning Little Vixen by Leos Janáček.  January 29, February 1, 2010 at 7:30 PM and January 31, 2010 at 2:00 PM.  Sung in English with English surtitles. Long before The Lion King, the Circle of Life was celebrated in this winning tale of the forest and its inhabitants. Adults and children of all ages will be delighted by Janáček's colorful and enchanting music that captures the wonder and joy of being alive..  Running in rotation with Don Giovanni by W. A. Mozart.

The Cunning Little Vixen is an opera by Leoš Janáček, with a libretto adapted by the composer from a serialized novella (daily comic) by Rudolf TÄ›snohlídek and Stanislav Lolek, which was first published in the newspaper Lidové noviny. When Janáček discovered TÄ›snohlídek's comic-strip and decided to turn it into an opera, he began work by meeting with the author and beginning a study of animals.

With this understanding of the characters involved, his own 70 years of life experience, and an undying, unrequited love for the much younger, married Kamila Stösslová, he began work on the opera. Writing his own libretto, he transformed himself into the forester, and Kamila into the vixen and Terynka. He also transformed the originally comedic cartoon into a philosophical reflection on the cycle of life and death by including the death of the vixen. As with other operas by older composers, this late opera shows a deep understanding of life leading to a return to simplicity.

It was given its premiere performance on 6 November 1924 in Brno conducted by František Neumann, with Ota Zítek as director and Eduard Milén as stage designer. The opera received its Italian premiere at La Scala in 1958 with Mariella Adani in the title role. The work was first staged in England by the Sadler's Wells Opera Company (since 1974 English National Opera) in 1961 - under the direction of Colin Graham, conductor Colin Davis, scenery and costume designs by Barry Kay.

Janacek's 1924 opera of life and death in the forest, written when he was nearly 70 (and just four years before his death) has long been regarded as one of his most accessible works. And yet in some ways it is a highly elusive work. Get the tone wrong, and it becomes all pantomimic and cutesy. Go all out for the human drama, and it becomes portentous. Janacek and his wife Zdenka thoroughly disliked the piece when they saw its Prague premiere in 1925, finding that it had lost all its bloom. Four weeks later they saw it again in Brno, in its original production which they already knew, and were almost relieved.

As Zdenka wrote in her memoirs: 'After the performance, Leos heaved a sigh of relief, we looked at one another and said to each other: it's beautiful after all'.