A singing crossbreed — a fox with human intelligence — stars in Leos Janacek’s opera, “The Cunning Little Vixen.” If only the New York Philharmonic’s semistaged performance Wednesday night were as successful a hybrid.
Expectations were high following the Phil’s last season’s blockbuster performances of “Le Grand Macabre,” but musically and dramatically, this “Vixen” just missed the mark.
Too bad, because the 1924 opera is a delightful work, a series of satirical and sentimental scenes based on a comic strip about a street-smart girl fox who’s captured by a gentle forester. The whimsical tale brought out the best in the Czech composer: witty vignettes of forest sounds, wistful solos suggesting folk songs and his trademark tear-jerking romantic outbursts for full orchestra.
Music director Alan Gilbert conducted with verve, and the Phil didn’t miss a note of the demanding high string writing and tricky soft brass solos. But the effect was clinical and precise, evoking neither smiles nor tears.
The “Macabre” production team, Giants Are Small, directed by Doug Fitch, transformed Avery Fisher Hall into a forest clearing with a bed of two-story sunflowers towering over the orchestra and golden light dappling the auditorium. But overly literal animal costumes and unfocused acting distracted from the gentle story, suggesting a community theater production of “Cats.”
In the spiky music of the Vixen, Isabel Bayrakdarian’s soprano turned strident, but otherwise the singing was terrific. Veteran baritone Alan Opie found pathos as the Forester, and tenor Keith Jameson made a tart cameo of the lovesick Schoolmaster.
Another standout was Marie Lenormand, whose tangy mezzo sailed through the high lines of the Vixen’s randy boyfriend, the Fox. Later, Joshua Bloom’s muscular baritone nearly stole the show in his brief third-act scene as a poacher.
Kudos to the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus, under the direction of Anthony Piccolo. These kids socked out their solo lines with clarity in character as frogs, beetles and the rest of Janacek’s menagerie — funny and charming and sweet.
If only their adult colleagues could have matched them!