In the bosom of the Wormsley Estate nestles a handsome, modern, semi-outdoors arena of wood and glass. Outside, swallows skim the surface of a grand lake and race amongst champagne-stocked picnic tents in the evening sunshine. A bell sounds, and murmuring crowds of richly dressed opera goers drift through the doors to take their seats. It is a sumptuous setting for Oxford's grandest night out.
Garsington Opera's website states that it is 'committed to promoting excellence', and excellence is precisely what it achieves. Last night I was privileged to witness a performance of The Cunning Little Vixen, by Leoš Janáček, which was of the very highest calibre. Soloists, dancers, chorus and orchestra all shone, creating a spectacle which kept me drawn in tight throughout.
Originally translated as The Adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears, the opera tells the tale of a forester's obsession with a young fox which he captures and tries to keep as a pet. It is a story of unrequited love, a story of oppression, inspired by Janáček's own experience of falling in love with a much younger married woman who neither encouraged nor rejected his affection.
The heroine of the story, Vixen Sharp-Ears, is, in this production, played by three individuals. One portrays Vixen as a cub, and the others her as a grown fox: one her singing voice and the other her dancing body. The Forester, too, is similarly dual, and it is an intriguing device. Through the dance I felt I had garnered an illicit glimpse of intimacy, of a tender fight, so much in contrast to the raunchy humour of the surface story. This duality of representation is present in Janáček's original idea also; the Vixen doubles as promiscuous Terynka who is leading on several admirers, and the line between the characters is deliberately blurred.
For me, Claire Booth, singing Vixen Sharp-Ears, is the beating heart of this production. I found myself, like the Forester, utterly entranced by this fighting, flirting, caring creature, and by a voice of such simultaneous power and delicacy, carrying an everyday story into the realms of the sublime. I was pleased to discover that the opera would be performed in Czech, as the composer intended, and all the singers, even the young leverets, frogs and fox cubs, sang their lines with an impression of deep understanding, and a seeming enjoyment of the bond between language and melody.
Janáček sought realism in opera, and in fact he developed the libretto for The Cunning Little Vixen from a daily cartoon which ran in the newspaper. The speech is vernacular, the subject matter often crude, and the humour unashamedly low brow. This particular production, directed by Daniel Slater, has taken this aspect of the opera and run with it, creating a vibrant, youthful, scandalous delight. The fact that many of the characters are animals has been exploited in order to indulge in displays of animalistic behaviour and elicit shrieks of shocked laughter from the audience. (I heard a venerable opera lover remark to her friend, "It's not like the other performances I've seen at Garsington".) In fact, it felt remarkably odd to be in such an exclusive place, watching such an Everyman's opera.
In his composition style Janáček was an individualist with a unique style and very distinctive scoring. His roots, however, were firmly in the Romantic era, and he was greatly influenced by Antonín Dvořák. Garsington Opera Orchestra, under the baton of internationally renowned conductor Garry Walker, seemed to revel in the unexpected voicings as much as in the lush romanticism. At times, several instruments blended so perfectly in unison that they created a sound that was entirely Other. Similarly, Janáček uses the rhythms and tonality of his local Moravian folk music, but there is no sense of quotation or pastiche, only of something completely new. Czech speech rhythms, too, influenced much of Janáček's melody writing, and the opera is built on a multitude of tiny motifs which echo throughout. I was delighted to see how the idea of returning motifs was incorporated into the visual design of the production, using both the positioning of figures in the stage space, and gesture and movement.
The costumes, a delightful blend of vintage Soviet and absurd animalery, have been beautifully designed to emphasise both the animal and the human aspects of the characters: cardiganned hens knit, lay and fuss, a mosquito with battered umbrella wings sips wine dregs through a plastic funnel proboscis, a newspaper-winged bat in dark glasses stacks barroom chairs, jays and woodpeckers strut perfect beak and crest profiles, and our Vixen smoulders in a coat of orange velvet with a fur collar, over a short white cotton slip. They are costumes which perfectly complement a score which is full of howls, growls and bird calls, but which tells such a human tale.
Anyone who possibly can should, at least once in their life, go to Garsington Opera. Apart from anything else the experience of picnicking by the lake, enjoying wide, delicious views, in the company of the great and the good, is something you remember for a long time. But the greatest delight to be found there is opera of stunning quality, performed and directed by internationally respected artists. It really doesn't get much better than this.