Opera Scotland

Cunning Little Vixen 2011Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD)

Read more about the opera Cunning Little Vixen

This was a fascinating event. The annual production in January, marking the collaboration between Scottish Opera and the Academy students, broke new ground in its sixth effort by reviving the classic production of the Vixen created by David Pountney and his brilliant team over thirty years ago. The designer and some of the original singers are no longer with us, but the invention came over very fresh in the hands of Elaine Tyler-Hall. Pountney even came on to take a bow at the final curtain (many members of the audience wondering who he was).

Even the student performers were younger than the staging, and it was perfectly possible for kids playing the small animals to be the children of the kids who created those roles. Astonishing.

When we first wrote up this performance the cast we entered included the Chief Hen.  We omitted the flock of four hens she led, as the cast seemed quite long enough, and most previous stagings to our knowledge excluded them.  However a huge collection of programmes donated to us by Dr Ian Robertson, a long-term Friend of Scottish Opera, and author of the delightful Doctors in Opera, contained a second copy.  In his programme he had written the name of a fifth hen, who just happened to be the future winner of Cardiff Singer of the World.  If entering Catriona Morison, then we could hardly omit the others, so here they are.