(Photo credit: Pocket Opera)

More than earning its cult following, San Francisco Bay’s Pocket Opera continues to enchant music-lovers of all ages and varying attention spans. Armed with the mission embraced by its founder Donald Pippin, the Pocket Opera breathes life into rare, under-appreciated, and flat out delightful operas. Sculpting them within a chamber setting—the final performance of Leoš Janáček’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” took place at the Legion of Honor’s diminutive Gunn Theater—the Pocket company offers spirited music and play at its most accessible.

The Czech opera, finished in 1924 among the composer’s last and most esteemed creations, was translated into English by Pocket founder Pippen, but had never had a production by the company itself. Until this season, aided by an adapted orchestration of the show for a 13-piece musical ensemble by Jonathan Lyness of Mid-Wales Opera Company, the production offered the complex and atmospheric themes of Janáček’s devising to full effect. It was a US premiere of this musical adaptation, capturing the essence of the composer’s folkloric allegory without sacrifice of nuance and legibility.

The setting, a true Beaux Arts proscenium stage complete with neo-classical columns and trompe l’oeil ceiling murals, is in itself an enchantment. And as the curtain went up, the spell deepened. The orchestra, led by Jonathan Khuner, sat at the back of the stage, visible through a delicate forest of faux branches, and as the vignettes unfolded, one might have forgotten their presence and let the illusion work on their senses.

In the role of Sharp Ears the Vixen, soprano Amy Foote brought bravura and a clear, ringing lyric voice. Her bright and agile phrasing was able to leap and spin through the challenging tonal pivots of Janáček’s score. She moved and sang with ease and bravura, matching a saucy performance with the Vixen’s saucy joie de vivre. Vixen is a lusty creation who explores her natural independence throughout the forest’s possibilities. Mates, adversaries, prey—all meet with her cunning little tricks and appetites. And in her multi-dimensional exuberance Foote brought her character and the entire production to delicious life. Providing the right tone of gravitas, baritone Spencer Dodd played The Forester with soulful stage presence and a magnificent vocal range. Especially comfortable in the mid section of his tessitura, Dodd phrased his aching verses with bittersweet acceptance. A rich honeyed cover at the top was matched by velvety passages at the bottom of his range. The Forester is the anchor of the opera, a character who meets and spars Harašta the Poacher, sung by bass-baritone Robert Stafford whose bold swagger made for some of the show’s memorable moments. Stafford’s voice brought a wealth of colors into the lower tessitura, making artful counterpoint with Dodd’s velvety baritone. The two men spoke-sang as they swapped lies about their desire for the elusive temptress Terynka, another of the all-too-human subtexts of “The Cunning Little Vixen.”

A project of true make-believe, the Pocket production took obvious glee in the hijinks, cavorting, mischief, and talltales afforded by Janáček’s music and Pippin’s high-spirited translation. Here was an operatic fairytale illustrating the cycles of nature—the forest animals and their neighboring humans—from lusty youth, to family abundance, to inevitable endings, before starting once more each new generation of life. Vivacious and comic, yet always with a bittersweet undertone, Vixen illustrates the full spectrum of lust and loss, desire and decline.

One could hear rumors of Stravinsky and Bartok, even smidges of Kurt Weil, Dvorak, and Debussy haunting the melodic shapes in the Czech composer’s weave of folk music and impressionism. The unique tonalities of Janáček’s native Moravian dialect, abrupt and hallucinatory in its tendency to reiteration, lent a mesmerizing aspect to the melodic structure. Part recitative, part shamanic repetition, the soundwork is provocative and seductively jagged. Almost as if Philip Glass’s endless arpeggios were bound together in bouquets of narrative motifs, each given to a different character—and in this case, to many non-human characters. Much of the singing moves in and out of conversational rhythm, lending a dialogical aspect to the opera’s unfolding. Simultaneously romantic and avant-garde, Vixen offers an utterly original soundscape in which singers, musicians, and audience all are swept up simultaneously.

We are in Pocket founder Donald Pippen’s debt, for opening up access to this rarely performed work of art. In keeping with the heart and soul of Pocket Opera’s mission, the English language version, and chamber presentation, of Janáček’s opera helps to refresh the repertoire.

In an era of concern for the future of opera, this intimate chamber production is an ideal point of entry. For those who think of opera as long, stodgy, and unintelligible, Pippin’s translated Vixen is a triumph of accessibility. Ideal especially for young audiences—comparable to Peter and the Wolf, even the Nutcracker— here was serious music brought to life in a playful setting by singers of all ages.

Brimming with charm, the production didn’t disappoint opera veterans in the sold out audience for the third and final performance. The opening scenes introduced us to all the forest creatures, one by one, some played by very young performers. We meet a sassy frog, outfitted in quilted vest and long green gardening gloves, catching the eye of the curious baby Vixen. The outstandingly imaginative DIY costumes not only added to the relaxed playful mood, but invited the audience to help in imagining the full-fledged creature being portrayed. After a moment of interaction between the frog and the young vixen, costumes morphed into the slick green body of the frog being interrogated by the bright orange fur of the fox, whose pointed ears were portrayed by an orange pussy riot cap.

Kudos to  Costume Designer Marina Polakoff, whose infinite resourcefulness animated every single costume, from hats to tails. In the hen house, red knitted ruffs stood in for the combs on the heads of the hens, allowing for imaginative and bloodless dispatching of the poultry later on by the cunning little vixen. We first met a forest bunny, portrayed by a very young Siena Coniglio, dressed all in white, who rolled, bounced, and tumbled about the stage. After that, rabbits brought down by hunters were portrayed by soft little white blankets. And it worked brilliantly!

A trio of cafe denizens—a Preacher (Sara Couden), the Schoolmaster (Erich Buchholz), and the Forester (Dodd) meet, kvetch, sing, and swap lies about their love for the village temptress Terynka. The Forester catches the Vixen and keeps her in a pen, until—with many flying chicken feathers—she escapes back into the woods and starts her own family.

In her orange jumpsuit, bushy tail, and white fur bib, our Vixen packed chutzpah into her every scene, outfoxing adversaries and forest foes alike, until she meets her mate. Amy Foote used her bright vocal gymnastics to deliver every word clearly, all the while cavorting, crawling, and bounding across the stage and through the woods. An actor who sings, Foote ignited the entire production and proved a sensitive partner to her eventual mate, Goldstripe the Fox, played by Hope Nelson. Scored for a mezzo soprano, the role of Goldstripe called for several intricate duets with Vixen, and while Nelson knew the music and proved a confidant onstage presence, her explosive vocal delivery overpowered even the orchestra. One felt this performer better suited to a fully-orchestrated opera and a much larger hall. Nelson seemed unaware that her voice was out of proportion with the other singers. Whether this was an issue of vocal coaching, or of stage direction remains unclear. However it was the only uneven element of the entire production design.

Wonderful animal characters abound in this opera. Sweet dancing interludes were smartly choreographed by Lissa Resnick, and sensitively performed by Stephen Fambro (Blue Dragonfly/ Forester) and Bela Watson (Butterfly/Terynka). Leandra Ramm as a rotund dog sang and cavorted with comic conviction. Cigarette-smoking Rooster Alicia Hurtado brought an aura of teenage defiance to the forest scenes. Led by Katherine Feller, Lilith Spivack and Natalie Harris the choral ensemble of chickens—perky in polka-dotted pinafores and red knit “combs”—sang some of the most inventive vignettes in the opera’s center. In the passages for choral ensemble one could hear the Slavic origins of Janáček’s motifs. The composer’s lifelong interest in Moravian folksongs and in the ethnomusicology of what became the Czech Republic, perfume the entire score.

Scenic design for Vixen was just as clever as costuming, notably a center stage creation using two ladders to create a badger’s lair, the foxes’ home, as well as a ledge of beer steins in the village pub. A low border of bare branches stood in for the forest in front of the orchestra.

Village gossip, village lust—forest gossip, forest lust. Life imitates life. All the cycles repeat, rhyme and echo.

Music Director Khuner kept his 13-piece orchestra, replete with strings, horns and harp, moving swiftly in deft support of singers and story. This final performance of Pocket Opera’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” was an all-too-rare encounter with the ancient alchemy of make-believe, Czech folklore come to life to the tune of an early 20th century master. Splendid work by Stage Director Nicolas A. Garcia. And thanks to the English translation by Donald Pippin, every bit of lusty enchantment was understood and relished.

Pocket Opera’s season continues with “The Merry Wives of Windsor” by Otto Nicolai starting June 16, followed by Giacomo Puccini’s “La Bohème” beginning July 14.