Thanks to Jeff Dunn and Christine Labroche, this discussion is going to great depths, but - as is my self-serving custom - I'd like to simplify and dumb it down a bit. (Before I do, a reminder to all Janacekites to Brian Freel's "Performance," at your humble servant's http://home.earthlink.net/~janos451/performances.htm.) Here's something about "Vixen" that I haven't seen come up yet in the discussion. The main thing that bothered me about the gigantic sets in the SF Opera's musically very pleasing performance is that the over-production deepened the misunderstanding/misrepresentation that "Vixen" is an opera. I am quite certain that it is not. Singing (a rather important component of the supposed genre...:) is virtually minimal in the work, with long (fabulously beautiful) orchestral introductions, bridges, intermezzi, preludes, postludes, etc. Much more than opera, it is a musical work with occasional uses of voice, similar to an oratorio or cantata. Hence all the production attempts around the world and in the whole history of "Vixen" to "do something" with all that music. Hence the Nagano-BBC animation, hence terribly annoying productions such as the one I saw recently at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, with little kids parading all over the place during the non-vocal portions, performing some kind of play that had nothing to do with the story. Please provide your own additional supporting evidence. Given the nature of the work, and the SF Opera's financial problems, I think it would have been a much better idea to present "Vixen" with the same cast, conductor and orchestra... in a concert version. Let the slinging of the mud begin. Janos Gereben/SF www.sfcv.org [log in to unmask]