A cycle fifteen years in the making
On 28 February 2026, the Berlin Staatsoper presents the premiere of Leoš Janáček’s Das schlaue Füchslein (The Cunning Little Vixen), conducted by Simon Rattle and directed by Ted Huffman. The production marks Huffman’s debut at the house and concludes Rattle’s extended Janáček cycle, which began in 2011 with Aus einem Totenhaus.
Over the past decade and a half, Rattle has led the Staatskapelle Berlin in a sustained exploration of Janáček’s operas, including Katja Kabanova, Jenůfa, Die Sache Makropulos and Ausflüge des Herrn Brouček. With The Cunning Little Vixen, that trajectory reaches its final chapter.
A work beyond categories
Premiered in 1924, The Cunning Little Vixen occupies a singular place in the operatic repertory. Based on a newspaper serial by Rudolf Těsnohlídek, the story follows the young vixen Sharp-Ears, captured by a Forester, resisting domestication and ultimately returning to the forest, where she forms a family before being shot by a poacher.
Yet Janáček’s opera moves far beyond fable. It unfolds as a reflection on renewal and loss, on the tension between civilisation and instinct, and on the continuity of life beyond individual existence. The composer’s highly individual language — shaped by Czech speech rhythms, abrupt shifts and luminous orchestration — binds human and animal worlds into a fluid dramatic continuum.
Rattle’s lifelong connection
For Rattle, the work carries particular resonance. As a teenager at the Royal Academy of Music, he played celesta in a student production of the opera and conducted the chorus — an experience that helped confirm his desire to become an opera conductor. He later led the piece at Glyndebourne and at the Royal Opera House in London, returning to it at different stages of his career.
In Berlin, the cast adds further layers of context. Magdalena Kožená, born near Brno — the region that inspired the original illustrations behind the story — appears as the Fox in her first stage role at the Berlin Staatsoper. The title role of the Vixen is sung by Vera-Lotte Boecker, also making her role debut. The Forester is performed by Svatopluk Sem. The Staatskapelle Berlin, together with the Staatsopernchor and children’s chorus, completes the musical forces.
Huffman’s staging approach
According to the Staatsoper, Ted Huffman conceives The Cunning Little Vixen as a layered parable in which human and animal perspectives overlap rather than oppose one another. The production avoids naturalistic forest imagery in favour of abstraction: a modular white box structure connects interior and exterior spaces, and scenes are shaped in concise, almost comic-strip-like sequences — a reference to the illustrated origins of the work.
A green velvet curtain is used to articulate shifts between narrative planes, while the boundaries between civilisation and instinct are intentionally left open. The animal characters appear in recognisable animal form, in some cases embodied by acrobats from Berlin’s state ballet and circus school, underlining the physical and symbolic dimensions of the piece.
Closing a Janáček chapter in Berlin
With this premiere, the Berlin Staatsoper completes a significant Janáček focus that has shaped part of its artistic profile for fifteen years. That the cycle concludes with The Cunning Little Vixen — a work centred on continuity, transformation and return — gives the occasion a particular symmetry.
Performances run on 28 February and 3, 7, 13 and 15 March 2026. The opera is sung in Czech with German and English surtitles.
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