Cunning Little Vixen: Janacek (Widescreen)

DVD, 98 minutes, IMAGE

The Chatelet Theatre Musical de Paris and the Orchestre de Paris under conductor Sir Charles Mackerras present Janacek's episodic, whimsical fairy tale opera. This enchanting production of "The Cunning Little Vixen," sung in the original Czech, brought together producer Nicholas Hytner, one of the most exciting of the new generation of stage directors, and conductor Charles Mackerras, a master of the Janacek style--lucid and transparent, every detail tingling with joyous energy. Janacek found the character of the Vixen in an illustrated tale, a kind of comic strip, in a local Brno newspaper, and Hytner takes his cue from opera's beginnings, presenting the episodic story in brightly colored sets and costumes of blissful innocence and simplicity. Through myriad shifts of scene, Bob Crowley's designs are evocative and whimsical: Cartoon cut-out trees make up the forest where the animals live; the inn frequented by the Forester, Priest and Schoolmaster is enclosed within a giant cognac bottle; the clearing where the Vixen and Fox meet and mate is like a large, leafy bed; when the Schoolmaster and Priest stagger home drunk, the moon and landscape turn upside down and the Schoolmaster's beloved appears in the center of a huge sunflower; the Vixen's dream of liberty is of meeting the Fox and floating away in a hot-air balloon. Jean Claude Gallotta's choreography for the insects and animals and Jean Kalman's lighting add to the nostalgically poetic effect of the whole, which captures both the work's rustic comedy and its profound humanity without a trace of sentimentality.