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25 November 2021

Radieuse Petite Renarde

Rusée au Théâtre des

Champs-Elysées

By José Pons

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Mirga
Gražinytė-Tyla, as part of a European concert tour of the book, make a
happy stop at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées with "The Cunning Little
Fox" by Leoš Janáček and a high-flying vocal distribution.

This "concertante" version of The Cunning Little Fox, lyrical work of relatively short
fact (about 1h40) benefits from a narrative space smoothly conducted, in the
absence of staging. Both adults and children actively participate in a performance
where charm operates permanently. The costumes tinged with poetry, the delicious
hats of fantasy and the few accessories - branches of trees animated by the children
who transform themselves successively into chickens, amphibians and other
facetious pups - are enough to create a specific atmosphere that comes to illuminate

a work in itself quite dark, with this tragic confrontation between humans and
animals. Under the precise baton of its Musical Director since 2016 the
Lithuanian Mirga Gražinytė-Tylathe City of Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra reveals its strengths: coherence and generosity of the desks, permanent
search for shade and color, the most accurate accents. The most accomplished part
of the conductor's reading is undeniably, not during the strictly orchestral parts of

the score, where Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla tends to focus primarily on maintaining a
certain rhythmic rigor, but rather during the vocal parts. She then seems to free
herself, warmer in terms of expression and lyricism itself. Janacek's music then
regains all its fullness, its joyful and non-formal simplicity.