You Cunning Little Vixen, You
Ah Spring! Time for inspiration and rebirth. Can you believe that Czech composer Leoš Janáček didn’t hear his first opera until he was 50? That’s pretty amazing for one who is considered to be among the most important composers to come out of the Czech Republic.
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Leoš Janáček's Das schlaue Füchslein, photo courtesy Leipzig Oper
Having been born in 1854 and entering the operatic world at the turn of the century, Janáček is part of a wave of 20th century composers who sought to bring everyday life and a variety of resources into musical composition. Perhaps this is one reason audiences are still connecting with his work. His melodies come from speech rather than notes. This means his work continues to be very original and unorthodox with odd spacing of chords and phrases. He wrote in what he referred to as “motifs” which he named “sčasovka” in his work on music theory. There is no real English translation, but was described by John Tyrrell, a leading specialist on Janáček’s music, as “a little flash of time, almost a kind of musical capsule, which Janáček often used in slow music as tiny swift motifs with remarkably characteristic rhythms that are supposed to pepper the musical flow.”
Janáček’s personal life was the stuff movies are made of. Tirelessly working on his music with no success early in his career; loss of himself after the death of his child; in love with one woman while married to another; after losing interest in that affair, living in the same house with his secretly divorced wife while suffering unrequited love for yet another woman. This all gave him plenty of fodder for creativity for sure.
Eun Yee You and the women's choir in Das schlaue Füchslein, photo: Andreas Birkigt
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Leipzig Opera
is premiering his lightest work,
Das schlaue Füchslein (the Cunning Vixen)
on Sat 25 Feb
It’s exactly my kind of thing………mainly told with animals! I’ve heard the costumes are fabulous and you can never lose with choreography from Heike Hennig and the Gewandhaus orchestra conducted by Matthias Foremny / William Lacey (29.6.)
Natually it will be sung in German. Here’s the quick wikipedia synopsis to prepare you in case you don’t have time to watch the BBC cartoon.
Act 1
In the forest, the animals and insects are playing and dancing. The Forester enters and lies down against a tree for a nap. A curious Vixen Cub (usually sung by a young girl), inquisitively chases a frog right into the lap of the surprised forester who forcibly takes the vixen home as a pet. Time passes (in the form of an orchestral interlude) and we see the Vixen, now grown to a young adult (and sung by a soprano), tied up in the forester’s yard with the conservative old dachshund. Fed up with life in confinement, the vixen chews through her rope, attacks the chickens, and hops the fence to freedom.
Act 2
The vixen takes over a badger’s home and kicks him out. In the inn, the pastor, forester, teacher and schoolmaster drink and talk about their mutual infatuation with the gypsy girl Terynka. The drunken schoolmaster leaves the inn and mistakes a sunflower behind which the vixen is hiding for Terynka and confesses his devotion to her. The forester, also on his way home, sees the vixen and fires two shots at her, sending her running. Later, the vixen, coming into her womanhood, meets a charming boy fox, and they retire to the badger’s home. An unexpected pregnancy and a forest full of gossipy creatures necessitate their marriage, which rounds out the act.
Act 3
The poacher Harasta is engaged to Terynka and is out hunting in preparation for their marriage. He sets a fox trap, which the numerous vixen cubs mock. Harasta, watching from a distance, shoots and kills the vixen, sending her children running. At Harasta’s wedding, the forester sees the vixen’s fur, which Harasta gave to Terynka as a wedding present, and flees to the forest to reflect. He returns to the place where he met the vixen, and sits at the tree grieving the loss of both the vixen and Terynka. His grief grows until, just as in the beginning of the opera, a frog unexpectedly jumps in his lap, the grandson of the one who did so in act one. This reassurance of the cycle of death leading to new life gives his heart a deep peace.
Irina Pauls, Stomping the Moon From her Hometown, Leipzig
Between 1971 and 1985 Carl Orff compiled “Carl Orff and His Work”, an eight volume documentation of his musical work and works for the Schulwerk. He concluded with a quote from Franz Werfel
“We are now returning and coming back home;
more than mere existence is having lived to the hilt,
death is strong, but behold the strongest,
stronger than death is music.”
Though he died in 1982, his work lives on and continues to grow.
Irina Pauls' Stomping La Luna, photo: Chris Rogl
Irina Pauls has returned to Leipzig, but not to die. In fact she is at a very satisfying point in her career as a choreographer. She gets to hand pick the projects she works on and is currently working on a piece to be performed in the Stadtbad in June and another that will be on the Kanal in September.
What strikes me most about Irina is her generosity and her sheer love of her artistry. Note I didn’t say ”dance”. That’s because it is so much more. In 1985, fresh out of the Palucca Schule, she was assigned as the Ballet Director for the National Theatre of Altenburg in Thuringia. This was an honor, but also a bit daunting as most of the company was older and more experienced than her; and Thuringia wasn’t exactly a hot bed of dance. Personally I think this was the best thing that could have happened to her. She turned to actors and theatre for inspiration and came up with a choreographic language that was very much her own.
When the wall came down, dancers from the former GDR were looking towards the States for direction. Irina too was invited and went there for an all expenses paid residency. She decided not to stay in the States. While it seemed to her that those around her were losing their identity, she had to decide just what of hers to keep; and that was something she needed to do back home. After all, Germany had borne Expressionist Dance pioneer Mary Wigman, of whom Greta Paluccca had been a student and Kurt Jooos, who taught Pina Bausch.
What makes Irina Irina is her use of spoken word, dance and music. This is why she was contacted by the Das Collektif performance group at the Carl Orff Institue in Salzburg. This excited Irina, who was fascinated with Orff’s Schulwerk method of working and used its principles in the making of the choreography for “Stomping La Luna”. These lie in working with syllabic sounds, improvisation and rhythmic work to create an elemental language that can be developed into a completed work in which all have participated in the making.
Irina had long wanted to do something connected with the moon. She wanted to release its magic. This was a perfect opportunity to take Orff’s 1939 version of the Grim Brothers’s fairy tale “der Mond” and to develop it further. In 1939 everyone was concerned with heaven and hell. Being a humanist, Orff liked the “other world” of the moon. This indescribable place was not lost on Irina either, who sees spending every minute of your life dwelling on going to heaven or hell as a distraction to the here and now. She hopes her “Stomping La Luna” will encourage people to live in the moment.
“Stomping La Luna” will be performed for the first time in Leipzig on Tue 21 Feb at HMT Leipzig “Felix Mendelsohn Bartholdy”.
choreographer Marcela Giesche @ !mehrTANZ Vertigo workshop, photo: Maeshelle West-Davies
I mentioned that Irina Pauls was generous. She has been tirelessly working to encourage the development of contemporary dance in our area. Through !mehrTanz, February marks the latest in this development with a series of workshops and residencies. The first week of every month is a workshop. People can come one or more days or for the whole week. The last three weeks of the month there is a residency with a piece at the end. This could be a performance or just a discussion about the work. Irina knows how hard it is to find and fund studio space for choreographers and wants to help them develop. She also wants to restore the area to its rightful place in contemporary dance. Along with the many musicians and artists that flock here, dancers will now know Leipzig as a place for them to learn and grow.