Leos Janacek - The Cunning Little Vixen /MacKerras

Leos JANACEK (1854-1928)

The Cunning Little Vixen  (1923)

Libretto the composer himself adapted from a novella by Rudolf Těsnohlídek.

Lucia Popp (Vixen)

Dalibor Jedlicka (Gamekeeper)

Eva Randová (Fox)

Eva Zigmundova (Gamekeeper's wife)

Vladimir Krejcik (Schoolmaster)

Richard Novak (Priest)

Vaclav Zitek (Harasta, a tramp)

Beno Blachut (Pasek, innkeeper)

Ivana Mixova (Inkeeper's wife)

Libuse Marova (Lapak)

Gertrude Jahn (Cock)

Eva Hribikova (Frantik)

Zuzana Hudecova (Pepik)

Peter Saray (Frog/Grasshopper)

Miriam Ondraskova (Cricket)

Wiener Philharmoniker

Charles Mackerras

Recording location: Sofiensaal, Vienna, March 1981

Review:

I first got to know Liška Bystrouška before I even thought of listening to Janáček. I haven't read Těsnohlídek's original serialized story, but I have read about it in works of philosopher Zdeněk Mathauser, phenomenologist and otherwise expert on Hašek's Švejk (which I haven't read, yet, too - don't judge me! I have at least seen the film adaption, though Mathauser says it completely flattens Hašek's novel, but I'm going off topic again, sorry). He have said two things about Bystrouška, which fascinated me. Firstly, he has shown that story's comedy often results from semiotic interplay between animal-as-metaphor and animal-as-animal - that is, animals behave like certain human characters they represent, but at some moments they're shockingly reverting to their purely animal selves (in opera adaptation, this happens at the end of the first act, when Bystrouška suddenly kills the chicken). But this is not unique - every second Pixar movie currently works with this semiotic device as source of comedy. So the second aspect was even more intriguing: Mathauser claims that as Bystrouška frees herself, challenges humans and becomes emancipated, the whole forest somehow becomes freer. Her free spirit radiates into environment, it flows everywhere. That idea mesmerized me.

So the point where I was for a long time disappointed with Janáček's opera may have been in this - that this (which may be only Mathauser's interpretation of Těsnohlídek's story, mind you, though) is not translated in the opera. And it can be, especially in opera - some kind of Bystrouška's motif can bend all other musical motifs around, penetrate the whole musical architecture through and through. Later I discovered that this happens in Věc Makropulos, but it doesn't happen here.

What does happen, though? At first glance, Příhody Lišky Bystroušky is quite ingenious mixture of lyrical and comical - where each mutually problematizes the other - which Janáček developed already in Mr. Brouček. But here it's shifted - comical becomes magical and playful, and actually lyrical itself, while lyrical becomes genuinely melancholic and even sad. Janáček's sčasenka composition method is perfected and honed sometimes into sort of minimalism avant-lettre, and it's quite beautiful. Insofar pure music is concerned, it's success. What does it all mean, though? Is Bystrouška with her defiance and antics even the main character, or does Janáček want us to identify with Revírník, who bookends the opera and finishes it with melancholic meditation on cycle of life? Or is she - in contrast to Elina Makropulos, whose character is multiplicity while she's physically singular - a presence of woman that's physically multiple through many generations, while remaining singular as a character? Anyway, isn't the shift mentioned above, in contrast to Mr. Brouček, actually the softening of the subversive potential of the comical? Note that in Těsnohlídek's story, Bystrouška doesn't die - isn't Janáček actually copping out with killing her, afraid of her power, afraid of his own creation? Isn't he afraid of that free spirit? I can't shake off this suspicion - I'll return to it at the end. Now let's discuss performances for a moment - bear with me here, it'll make sense at the end.

Except for Mackerras, I've listened to Neumann and latest Rattle. All interpretations are different, all are somehow equally valid - as if Bystrouška was one of those piece - like Mahler's Fifth or Bartók's string quartets - which have no solution: you make certain choices, open certain avenues which necessarily closes the others, and as a result each interpretation seems incomplete. Anyway - here, in particular, Rattle, trained in avantgarde, tries to bring out the sinister side of the piece, emphasize the cruelty. Neumann emphasizes the tragic and melancholic - especially in the languid second act. Mackerras emphasizes the playful, the magical and the lyrical. There's not a better place to show this than the wedding at the end of the second act - Neumann depicts it with total abandon as dizzying whirlpool, which exquisitely works with Czech/Moravian/Slovak folklore images, burnt into our collective psyché, of wedding as always something horrifying alongside all the merriment, too - of wedding as even certain sort of death of the girl (the folk imagination is filled with dead brides). Compare this with Mackerras, who presents it as pastoral impressionistic tableau. There's certain harshness to Neumann, overall, which seems apt and proper (straightforward harshness, instead of Rattle's intellectual prying for the dark undertones). There's certain brightness and lightness to Mackerras, which seems like whitewashing. (BTW, Neumann also has the best Zlatohříbek in Libuše Domanínská but that's nitpicking, who cares about that.)

However, Mackerras has Lucia Popp as Bystrouška. Her light coloratura, sweet almost to a fault, is perfect here. Elsewhere, somehow, such voice could signal vulnerability, but here it radiates utter confidence - she's absolutely gripping in every situation: longing, fighting, bantering, desiring, loving. She's as seductive as she's defiant. And as a result, you miss every moment without Bystrouška - you're thankful for Mackerras rushing a bit through the opening of second act, but would love him to slow down when Bystrouška meets Zlatohříbek. As I said, I'm suspicious of where Janáček's loyalties lie here - but if my suspicions are correct, Mackerras with Popp work even against him and successfully defeat him. And so - and here I'm really circling to conclusion - as a result they don't present Příhody Lišky Bystroušky as imagined by me via Mathauser's reading, because we don't hear Bystrouška's emancipation filling the musical world she inhabits. But they do something else instead, which works beautifully: they make me hear her absence. Janáček, maybe even despite himself, created deafening absences in the opera. But they're revealed only under certain conditions. For all the objections one may raise against Mackerras' reading, he emphasizes these absences.

This will suffice for now. I'm no longer worried. I can now enjoy beautiful music (dawn interlude in first act is especially glorious), of which in this opera there's a plethora.

Xenakis (Rate your Music)