Garsington Opera's terrific new production may shock some with its farmyard humour, but not Christopher Gray

Garsington Opera’s superb new production of Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen benefits hugely from the fact that it is performed in a glass-walled pavilion, so called, set amid the lovely landscape of Mark Getty’s Wormsley Estate with the evening sun, until it sets, bathing the bucolic action in dappled light. Here are vital country matters vividly — and violently — depicted in a perfect country setting.

Visual pleasure is complemented by a compelling aural picture conjured through the music, which is luminously interpreted under conductor Garry Walker.

The Garsington Opera Orchestra has never sounded better, even in this season’s Fidelio, and the singing and acting — and, indeed, dancing — across a large cast, are almost uniformly excellent.

Under the direction of Daniel Slater they show us a nature more red in tooth and claw than is usually the case in this opera. In the well-managed scene in the hen-house, for instance, where the submissive, knitting chickens sport combs fashioned from red Marigold gloves, Claire Booth’s feisty Vixen does in their lord and master the Cock (Alice Rose Privett) by biting off what most matters in his farmyard function.

Focusing on the same bodily area, red tends towards blue as Forester Grant Doyle’s seriously priapic dog (Anna Harvey) proudly displays what the Vixen might be in for. She declines.

While this might shock some people, no one could be other than amused, surely, when the junior denizens of the woods line up to supply a wet farewell to Badger (Bragi Jónsson) after the Vixen evicts him from his sett.

Nor, without doubt, could anyone fail to be swept up in the warmth and wonder of the central love story. This sees everyone’s favourite ‘girl’ paired up, during a duet of matchless beauty, with her devoted Fox (mezzo Victoria Simmonds) and their proud production of innumerable (literally!) cubs.

The Cunning Little Vixen
Garsington Opera at Wormsley
Until July 12
Call 01865 361361 or visit garsingtonopera.org