Deserves to become an ENO staple: The Cunning Little Vixen reviewed

Spoiler alert. The last words in Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen come from a child playing a frog. The story has come full circle — there was a frog near the start of Act One, and naturally you assume it’s the same one. But no: ‘That wasn’t me. That was my grandaddy. He used to tell me about you.’ It’s the final sad-sweet sting; the orchestra swells and the curtain falls. Perfection. Or so Janacek thought, anyway: ‘To end with the frog is impossible,’ insisted his German translator Max Brod — the same well-meaning meddler who either rescued or (according to taste) wrecked Kafka. Brod wanted a final hymn to nature from the central human character, the Forester. You know, a proper peroration. Janacek, thankfully, put him straight back in his box.

In fairness, Brod probably never heard the final scene of the Vixen conducted the way Martyn Brabbins conducted it, in this first performance of Jamie Manton’s new production (his first at the Coliseum) for English National Opera.