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How the Vixen lost its mores: gesture and music in Janáček's animal opera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2011

Jennifer Sheppard
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Abstract

With a diverse and colourful cast of animals, birds, insects and human villagers, Příhody lišky Bystroušky (known in English as The Cunning Little Vixen), is one of Leoš Janáček's most popular, if peculiar, operas. Though nowadays Bystrouška is typically characterised as a charming portrayal of the continuous renewal of life in nature, this idea emerged only gradually from a tangle of competing and occasionally contradictory views in which, however, the complexity of the moral laws by which the opera's inhabitants live was frequently central. By tracing the history of the opera's stagings in the Czech Republic; drawing out themes that developed in the journalistic and critical discourse around those performances; and reading the opera's music and stage action closely, this article argues that the amoral codes of Bystrouška's world not only inhere in the story, its text, and even, perhaps, in the idea of nature's cycle of life itself, but that at certain times in the opera they are also given expression through particular correlations and disjunctions between the opera's music and the physical actions and gestures of the singers on stage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 147 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 B.N., ‘Z příprav na Lišku Bystroušku’, Moravské noviny (Brno), n.d. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own.

2 lk. [Ludvík Kundera], ‘Premiera Janáčkovy Lišky Bystroušky’, Lidové noviny (Brno), 7 November 1924. Milén's designs were used more than once: Zítek reused both sets and costumes for Brno's very next ‘new production’ of the opera in 1927. In terms of convenience, practicality and economy this is unsurprising, given the number and diversity of costumes the theatre provided for the premiere – even if the critic who estimated there were seventy was exaggerating. Oskar Linhart, when he first staged the opera at the Brno opera house in 1952, also adopted Milén's costume designs alongside sets by Josef A. Šálek.

3 The rest of the production team was also solid: Otakar Ostrčil, then well established as director of opera at the National Theatre and respected for his musical interpretations and attentive preparatory work with the composer, was the conductor. The staging was entrusted to Ferdinand Pujman who, although not yet officially appointed as director at the National Theatre, had already cemented his reputation as a director of opera: he had staged the first Pélleas et Mélisande at the National Theatre, as well as a hugely successful production of Bedřich Smetana's Prodaná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride) in 1923, which would go on to amass 383 performances over the next eleven years.

4 This method of surveying the major Czech productions and their reception is one I developed for the purposes of my dissertation. It allows for a fuller picture of an opera's performance history than that provided by either reception or production taken alone. I believe that tracing the practices, issues and interpretations that remain constant throughout the entirety of an opera's performance history offers a useful counterfoil to the relativising interpretational tendencies of reception studies that consider, for example, only the first or the most famous stagings.

5 Janáček believed that the rhythm, cadence and intonation of spoken Czech could be accurately captured in music notation as nápěvky mluvy (speech melodies). In various writings he produced on the topic of speech melodies, he made the claim that they revealed information about the speaker's temperament, emotional state and motives; for example, if the speaker were a lazy person, a happy one, or lying, this would all be expressed through the melody of their speech. As such, Janáček insisted that the speech melody was of paramount importance for opera composers and he was obsessive about ‘collecting’ them, frequently notating fragments of speech as they interested him. There has yet to be, however, any conclusive evidence that he ever used any actual speech melody in his compositions.

6 ‘Povídka o neslušném ježkovi’ was a short story published in 1908 in the magazine Humoristické listy. Hašek was a prolific writer of short stories; it was the medium in which he initially developed Švejk's character, first publishing on him in 1911. Hašek only began composing Švejk as a novel in 1921; he intended it to have four volumes, but the last of these remained incomplete when he died in 1923 of tuberculosis.

7 Porter, J. R. and Russell, W. M. S. (eds.), Animals in Folklore (Ipswich, 1978), ixGoogle Scholar . See also Derieux, Samuel A., Animal Personalities (Garden City, 1923)Google Scholar ; Sax, Boria, The Frog King: On Legends, Fables, Fairy Tales, and Anecdotes of Animals (New York, 1990)Google Scholar ; and Wootton, Anthony, Animal Folklore, Myth and Legend (New York, 1986)Google Scholar .

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9 Erik Chisholm, for example, described them this way in his book, The Operas of Leoš Janáček (Oxford, 1971). Some of the misunderstanding may have been caused by Těsnohlídek's modest remark that he was asked to provide ‘little lines’ for the pictures; Tyrrell, John, Janáček's Operas: A Documentary Account (London, 1992), 284Google Scholar . Indirectly, though trenchantly, contributing to the myth is the booklet printed for the 1981 recording of the opera conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, which reproduces the drawings in a very similar layout to that of modern newspapers' comic strips: four conjoined panels. Most recently, an animated film of the opera, directed by Geoff Dunbar to an adapted score by Kent Nagano, was released in 2003.

10 There were fifty-one instalments in total: the first appeared on 7 April, the last on 23 June 1920. Tyrrell, Janáček's Operas, 283.

11 H.D. [Hubert Doležil], ‘Znovu Janáček. Liška Bystrouška v Národním divadle’, České slovo (Prague), 23 May 1937.

12 Abs., ‘Příhody Lišky Bystroušky’, Národní politika (Prague), 18 May 1948.

13 B.N., ‘Z príprav na Lišku Bystroušku’.

14 Aš. [Antonín Šilhan], ‘Leoš Janáček: Příhody Lišky Bystroušky’, Národnílisty (Prague), 23 May 1937.

15 See, for example, H.D. [Doležil], ‘Znovu Janáček. Liška Bystrouška v Národním divadle’; K.B.J. [Karel Boleslav Jirák], ‘Kulturní Hlídka. Mezinárodní festival. Premiéra Janáčkovy “Lišky Bystroušky”’, Národní osvobození (Prague), 20 May 1925; Abs., ‘Příhody Lišky Bystroušky’; and Vladimír Šefl, ‘O Lišce, která zpívá’, Večerní (Prague), 29 June 1965.

16 Ryan, Karen L., Stalin in Russian Satire, 1917–1991 (Wisconsin, 2009), 50Google Scholar .

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18 H.D. [Doležil], ‘Z novu Janáček. Liška Bystrouška v Národním divadle’.

19 Or, possibly, ‘sharp little one’, depending on whether one thinks of the syllables as two root words (sharp and ear), or one root word plus a diminutive. That Janáček's little vixen ever came to be ‘cunning’ is the result of a series of translations originating from an accident. Těsnohlídek had actually called her bystronožký (fleet-footed), but when the first instalment of the series was going to print, the typesetter at the newspaper misread the word, set it as bystroušky, and from then on the vixen's name became ‘sharp-ears’. For more on this, see Tyrrell, , Janáček's Operas, 284–285Google Scholar .

20 Tyrrell, Janáček's Operas, 296.

21 T., ‘L. Janáčka Příhody lišky Bystroušky’, Pražské noviny (Prague), 23 May 1937.

22 Tyrrell, Janáček's Operas, 295. Tyrrell's translation.

23 B.V. [Boleslav Vomáčka], ‘Příhody Lišky Bystroušky Talichovo provedení v Národním divadle’, Lidové noviny (Brno), 24 May 1937; Martin Tůma, ‘Apoteóza života a přírody’, Tvorba (Prague) 29 July 1970; J.P.K., ‘V nastudování Václava Talicha Liška Bystrouška z novu v Národním divadle’, A-Z ranné v úterý (Prague), 25 May 1937; R.J. [Rudolf Jeníček], ‘Talichova “Liška Bystrouška”’, Právolidu (Prague), 23 May 1937.

24 lk. [Kundera], ‘Premiera Janáčkovy Lišky Bystroušky’.

25 O.Š. [Otakar Šourek], ‘Janáčkova “Liška Bystrouška”’, Venkov (Prague), 23 May 1937.

26 J.V. [Jaroslav Vogel], ‘Janáčkova Liška Bystrouška v brněnské opeře’, Národní obroda (Brno), 18 February 1947.

27 K.B.J. [Jirák], ‘Kulturní Hlídka. Mezinárodní festival. Premiéra Janáčkovy “Lišky Bystroušky”’. See also Josef Bartoš, ‘Janáček-Première im Nationaltheater’, Prager Presse (Prague), 20 May 1925.

28 J.P., ‘Leoš Janáček: “Příhody lišky Bystroušky”’, Lidové listy (Prague), 22 May 1937.

29 H.D. [Doležil], ‘Z novu Janáček. Liška Bystrouška v Národním divadle’.

30 Paul Stefan, ‘Forecast and Review: Echoes From Prague’, Modern Music 3/1 (1925), 31–2.

31 Abs., ‘Příhody Lišky Bystroušky’.

32 The newness of the problem was first pointed out by Kundera: lk. [Kundera], ‘Premiera Janáčkovy Lišky Bystroušky’. See also Ajp. [Anna J. Patzaková], ‘Janáčkova “Bystrouška” po sedmnácti letech’, Národní osvobození (Prague), 23 May 1937. See also –id., ‘Hymnu svěčně přírody a lásky’, Čin (Brno), 18 May 1948; and Zuzana Ledererová, ‘Bystrouška a scénograf’, Scéna (Prague), 21 January 1985.

33 Tyrrell, Janáček's Operas, 293.

34 When the National Theatre in Prague was preparing for their first Bystrouška, Janáček wrote to conductor Otakar Ostrčil requesting that the chicken extras be played by children, and that ‘girls about fifteen years old’ be cast in the parts of the Rooster, the Hen and the dog Lapák. Tyrrell, Janáček's Operas, 293. Tyrrell's translation.

35 Tyrrell, Janáček's Operas, 299.

36 Bártová, Jindřiška and Holá, Monika, Režijní přístupy k operám Leoše Janáčka v Brně (Brno, 2004), 35–38Google Scholar .

37 Zítek, Ota, ‘K nové inscenaci Lišky Bystroušky’, Svobodné noviny (Prague), 15 February 1947Google Scholar .

38 Fch., ‘Liška Bystrouška v Janáčkové opeře’, Čin (Prague), 18 February 1947.

39 –k., ‘Nová Liška Bystrouška’, Svobodné noviny (Prague), 18 February 1947.

40 Štěpán, Luděk, ‘Před premiérou’, Mladá fronta (Brno), 2 October 1965Google Scholar .

41 Zítek, ‘K nové inscenaci Lišky Bystroušky’.

42 Fch., ‘Liška Bystrouška v Janáčkové opeře’.

43 J.H. [Josef Hutter], ‘Příhody Lišky Bystroušky v Talichově podání’, Národní střed (Prague), 23 May 1937; Vbr. [Vladimír Bor], ‘Nové divadlo v Brně začalo Janáčkem’, Lidová demokracie (Prague), 6 October 1965.

44 J.F. [Jiří Fukač], ‘Liška nejen pro festival’, Brněnský večerník (Brno), 1 October 1984.

45 See, for example, Fukač, Jiří, ‘Bystrouška otevřela nové divadlo’, Rovnost (Brno), 5 October 1965Google Scholar .

46 Ledererová, ‘Bystrouška a scénograf’.

47 See ‘Slavná chvíle brněnské kultury’, Lidová demokracie (Prague), 3 October 1965Google Scholar .

48 vb., ‘Kultura. Bystrouška otevírá nové divadlo’, Zemědělské noviny Morava (Brno), 7 October 1965Google Scholar .

49 Bajer, Jiří, ‘Co s nimi’, Divadelní a filmové noviny (Prague), 20 October 1965Google Scholar .

50 Ibid.

51 See, for example, Jiří Fukač, ‘Bystrouška otevřela nové divadlo’; and vb., ‘Kultura. Bystrouška otevírá nové divadlo’. On the other hand, the Slovak soprano Anna Martvoňová, who replaced the indisposed Šormová on the opening night, received slightly more attention for singing her part in a Slovak translation (but this was Brno and the opera's use of dialect was a point of pride in the city).

52 Bajer, Jiří, ‘Liška Bystrouška v novém’, Rudé právo (Prague), 8 October 1965Google Scholar . See also Vbr. [Vladimír Bor], ‘Nové divadlo v Brně začalo Janáčkem’.

53 Čech, Vladimír, ‘Příliš hrubozronné Příhody’, Brněnský večerník (Brno), 10 October 1978Google Scholar .

54 Bartoš, ‘Janáček-Première im Nationaltheater’.

55 For representative comments by Czech critics on pantomime and ballet in the opera, see lk. [Kundera], ‘Premiera Janáčkovy Lišky Bystroušky’, and Ra., ‘Liška Bystrouška’, Lidové noviny (Brno), 18 May 1948.

56 ‘Leoš Janáček: Přihody Lišky Bystroušky’, Národní listy (Prague), 23 May 1937Google Scholar .

57 K.B.J. [Jirák], ‘Kulturní Hlídka. Mezinárodní festival. Premiéra Janáčkovy “Lišky Bystroušky”’.

58 Smart, Mary Ann, Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera (Berkeley, 2006), 6Google Scholar .

59 H.D. [Doležil], ‘Z novu Janáček. Liška Bystrouška v Národním divadle’. For a sample of this observation about Janáček's operas, see Josef Bartoš, ‘Janáček-Première im Nationaltheatre’; J.P., , ‘Z kulturního života. Leoš Janáček. Věc Makropulos’, Národní listy (Prague), 21 December 1926Google Scholar ; Bělohlavek, Bedřich, ‘Co se Hraje.Věc Makropulos’, Právo lidu (Prague), 2 March 1928Google Scholar . Another term in use was ‘aphoristic’, see J.P., ‘Leoš Janáček: “Příhody lišky Bystroušky”’.

60 Janáček, , ‘Stehlíček’, Lidové noviny (Brno), 1 June 1921Google Scholar . Reprinted in Janáček, Leoš, Literární dílo, ed. Straková, Theodora and Drlíková, Eva, series I, vol. 1, bk. 1 (Brno, 2003), 473–475Google Scholar .

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63 Ryan, Stalin in Russian Satire, 50.

64 Bradbrook, Bohuslava, Karel Čapek: In Pursuit of Truth, Tolerance, and Trust (Brighton, 1998), 53Google Scholar .

65 H.D. [Doležil], ‘Z novu Janáček. Liška Bystrouška v Národním divadle’.

66 O.Š. [Šourek], ‘Janáčkova “Liška Bystrouška”’.