Opera Rewind: Foxy, Foxy

New York City Opera's classic The Cunning Little Vixen.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Frame grab of The Cunning Little Vixen with Gianna Rolandi in the title role of "Sharp-Ears."
Image © 1983 Live From Lincoln Center/New York City Opera.

Presented purely here for the dual purpose of nostalgia and education, this is a video of the New York City Opera's classic Maurice Sendak production of Leos Janacek's magical opera The Cunning Little Vixen. (Which will never be seen again as the sets and props were dumped at the company's auction over the winter.)

This magnificent performance filmed in 1983 for a Live in Lincoln Center special features the Sendak production in all of its comic glory, from the bloated chickens to the barely controlled furry antics of Sharp-Ears and Golden-Stripe in the comic Czech answer to Tristan und Isolde. 

I grew up going to the City Opera but never sawVixen...until a one-time revival of the show in the 1990s. Maurice Sendak did a number of productions for the company, including Oliver Knussen's opera Where the Wild Things Are, Prokofiev's The Love For Three Oranges and a double-bill of Maurice Ravel's one-act operas L'Heure Espagnole and L'Enfant et les Sortileges. I saw all of these at the building that used to be the company's home, the former New York State Theater at Lincoln Center.
Anyway, it's on YouTube in all of its foxy glory. Wait 'til you see what happens to those chickens at about 25 minutes in.