About the work
Leoš Janáček's three-act opera Příhody lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen) was premiered in 1924 at the Národní divadlo Brno. The libretto is Janáček's adaptation of a newspaper comic strip by Rudolf Těsnohlídek; the composer took a light daily feature and transformed it into one of the most philosophically rich operas of the twentieth century. The opera portrays the intertwined lives of humans and animals in a Moravian forest across the span of natural renewal.
Plot
A forester captures a young vixen, Bystrouška, and brings her home as a pet. She grows up, rebels against domestication, and returns to the forest. There she meets a young fox, marries him, raises a litter of cubs, and dies—shot by a poacher. The forester, now grown old, returns to the same forest clearing where he first met the vixen and witnesses a tiny fox cub emerging from the undergrowth: the life cycle renews itself. Meanwhile parallel human stories unfold in a village pub—failed loves, unspoken regrets, the quiet passing of ordinary lives.
Cultural significance
Das schlaue Füchslein is Janáček's most tender work and one of the most beloved operas of the twentieth century. The forester's final monologue, reflecting on the continuity of life and death in nature, is among the most moving passages in all opera—Janáček asked for it to be played at his funeral, which was duly done in 1928. Walter Felsenstein's 1956 Komische Oper Berlin production, performed without intermission, established the modern performance tradition. Recent productions by André Engel and Melly Still have explored the opera's ecological resonances.