Most of Image’s US music DVDs, easily obtainable by mail order, have no regional coding, so UK players will accept them (though a few older televisions may not!). This one, though, requires a ‘codefree’ player – easily enough bought or modified. It’s surprising this has not been released in Europe, though, because composer and work are so popular, and it preserves one of Sir Thomas Allen’s greatest roles.
Mackerras’s conducting adds the intensity of live performance to the luminous lyricism of his studio version (Decca, 11/86), matched by Nicholas Hytner’s witty, dynamic staging. He perhaps over-eggs the identification of the abused Vixen with the gypsy Terinka, but makes lively use of mollocking dancers to depict the freedom of animal life. With Bob Crowley’s designs (despite some garish Post-Modernist colouring) this is almost as enchanting as David Pountney’s famous Scottish Opera/Welsh National Opera production.
The pivotal performance is Allen’s Forester, one of those characterisations almost heroic in its rich humanity. He sounds sufficiently at home in the Czech original (with optional subtitles), even opposite Eva Jenis’s lively Vixen – a little coarser in voice and manner than some, but still catching the heart as she should. The idiomatic feeling is heightened by Novak and Hajna, doubling the hapless Parson and Schoolmaster with beastly counterparts, and Kusnjer and Marova’s lively cameos. Minutillo makes a fine swaggering mezzo Fox, but the Dog becomes a tenor a la Felsenstein – inauthentic, but probably more effective.
Captured with Large’s usual flair, this Vixen is a gem, well worth a little extra trouble to enjoy.'