I began to watch the play, The Cunning Little Vixen, which was created by Janáček from an inspiration of a comic book. The story transitions from a cute children's tale to an ultimate tragedy. Within this opera, the vixen is captured by a forester, who ties her up outside his house and names her "Sharp-Ears". The vixen does not like being held captive outside of the forester's cottage and is ridiculed by the hens, whom she questions as to why they enjoy being tied up and unfree. After this, the forester's wife comes outside, witnessing the vixen bite the hens and then escape into the forest. The vixen then settles in a badger's home to make a home for herself. Not long after, the forester has two acquaintances over who make fun of him for letting the vixen go. Once one of the acquaintances leaves drunk, he sees the vixen who reminds him of his past lover and tries to catch her but proves to be unsuccessful. Sharp-ears ends up meeting a male fox and she falls in love with him along with becoming pregnant with the male fox's cubs. While all of this is going on, the forester searching the forest from bottom to top for the vixen and comes upon a dead hare. The poacher who killed the hare convinces the forester to use the dead hare as a trap to catch the vixen as the forester had been looking for her for days.
This is where the story transitions from bright to a dark tale. The vixen's cubs play around the trap and as the vixen sees this she threatens the poacher to come near her or her babies. Unfortunately, the poacher shoots the vixen with a rifle and kills her. The scene after this goes back to where the forester is sitting under a tree and sees a young vixen whom he believes looks just like the mother he used to cherish. He wants to catch the cub vixen but realizes life must go on and instead lets it go.
The meaning of this opera is to show the circle of life and also portrays the animals as having human spirits such as the vixens falling in love and one of them becoming impregnated. The use of animals in replacement of human beings is a fun twist to the story; however, the story proves to be just as emotionally stimulating to the audience due to its ability to manifest so many feelings while watching it.
The "mise en scene" in this opera has a very foresty feel to it with all the actors dressed as the character of animals. The opera I watched, although it was made in more modern times, seems to be set up in Shakespearean times, probably to parallel when the author wrote the opera. The end of the opera is just like the scenery and setup in the beginning. It begins with the forester sitting under the tree and admiring the vixen dancing around him. This scenery and plot is exactly how the ending of the opera plays out, but instead the vixen is the cub the vixen gave birth to before she was killed. It has the meaning of life written all over it and the scenery at the end being the exact as the beginning gives pride to this. A lot of the scenery in the opera takes place around the vixen when she settles into the badger's hole to stay away from the forester. It seems that although she did not like living outside of the forester's cottage and felt captive, the forester actually loved her and this is why he let her cub go at the end of the opera. It expresses that life carries on after a death and showing the cub vixen dances by the forester gives depth to this thought.
If I were to make this play into a video game, I would make somewhat of a puzzle oriented game that would have the Vixen running away from the poacher. To execute this type of plot to the game, I would have certain badger holes that would need to be found throughout the game's maze in order to survive from the poacher's madness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQvLOfbvRwE
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