Opera and comics should make good bedfellows; both skimp on psychological depth, preferring bold characterisation, raw emotion and plots that are economical, occasionally to a fault. Yet there is only one great comics-based opera: Leoš JanáÄek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, first performed in 1924.
JanáÄek got the idea for Vixen from a newspaper’s comic-strip serialisation of what we might today call a graphic novel. The opera’s English title suggests cuddly anthropomorphism, but here the animals are cleverer, livelier and probably enjoy their sex more than their human antagonists. At the centre of the story is an ageing Forester’s obsessive pursuit of the Vixen Sharp Ears, who runs rings round him, for a while at least.
