Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu has launched its 2025–26 season with a strikingly symbolic staging of Leoš Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen. The opening night, held on Monday, drew a warm reception and ended with eight minutes of applause.
Before the curtain rose, the theatre projected a message of peace, stressing the role of art and culture as ‘paths of dialogue and hope’. The orchestra, under the baton of Josep Pons, performed Pau Casals’s El cant dels ocells, underscoring the sentiment.
Janáček’s opera, first staged a century ago, tells the tale of a young vixen captured by a forester, who later escapes to reclaim her freedom. It is an allegory of nature’s cycles, exploring the relationship between humans, animals and the inevitability of renewal. On this occasion, soprano Elena Tsallagova played the vixen, with baritone Peter Mattei as the forester.
The Liceu last presented the work in the 2001–02 season, but then it was sung in English; this revival, a production by Barrie Kosky revived by Andreas Weirich, restored the Czech original. Kosky’s concept emphasises stripped-back staging: shimmering silver curtains stand in for the forest, while the cast avoid literal animal costumes. Humans wear black, while animals are dressed in vivid colours. The opera begins with a funeral scene, not found in the original tale, which sets a reflective tone.
For Josep Pons, who is entering his final year as musical director of the Liceu orchestra, this production holds special weight. He highlighted how Janáček’s score reflects early 20th-century musical movements while drawing on Czech folk rhythms and intonations.
The performance’s most resounding ovations went to Pons himself, Tsallagova, and the children’s chorus drawn from the Orfeó Català.
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