From 20 to 30 September 2025, the Gran Teatre del Liceu opens its 2025/26 season with Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, conducted by Josep Pons. Returning to the theatre after twenty-four years, the opera launches Pons’s final season as the institution’s Music Director.
First performed in Brno in 1924, The Cunning Little Vixen is based on a popular illustrated story by Rudolf Těsnohlídek, adapted by the composer himself. Janáček transforms its apparently simple narrative into a profound reflection on the cycle of life, freedom, death and the constant renewal of nature.
The score brings the human and animal worlds together through music of exceptional rhythmic and orchestral originality. Janáček captures the sounds, movement and vitality of the forest while contrasting the instinctive freedom of the animals with the melancholy and frustrations of the human characters.
Barrie Kosky’s production, revived by Andreas Weirich, avoids a naturalistic representation of the forest. It begins with the imagery of a funeral and gradually transforms its initial darkness into an explosion of colour, movement and life. The animal characters are not portrayed through realistic costumes; instead, colour and physical movement evoke their nature and distinguish them from the darker human world.
The cast is led by Elena Tsallagova as Bystrouška, the young Vixen; Paula Murrihy as the Fox, and Peter Mattei as the Forester. They are joined by Anaïs Masllorens, David Alegret, Alejandro López, Milan Perišić, José Manuel Montero, Sara Bañeras, Mireia Pintó, Roger Padullés and Mercedes Gancedo, together with the Orfeó Català Children’s Choir, the Gran Teatre del Liceu Chorus and Symphony Orchestra.
Leading the theatre’s resident ensembles, Josep Pons approaches one of Janáček’s most personal scores, reflecting his close artistic affinity with the composer. His interpretation highlights its rhythmic precision, orchestral colours and the extraordinary way in which the music merges with theatrical gesture and the essence of the natural world.
Presented without an interval, the production concentrates a succession of humorous, tender, sensual and disturbing scenes into approximately one hour and forty minutes. Its final scene, which Janáček loved so deeply that he requested it be performed at his funeral, expresses a serene acceptance of death as part of the eternal cycle of life.
With The Cunning Little Vixen, the Liceu opens a particularly significant season with a work that combines accessibility and philosophical depth. The production invites audiences to reflect on humanity’s relationship with the planet and on the need to recover a simpler, more respectful and more conscious relationship with nature.