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Fantastic Mr Fox

Composer

Tobias Picker

Librettist

Donald Sturrock after Roald Dahl’s book

Venue and Dates

Los Angeles Opera

9-22 December 1998

World Premiere

Conductor

 Peter Ash

Production

Costumes, after designs by Gerald Scarfe

Performers

Fantastic Mr. Fox : Gerald Finley

Mrs. Fox : Suzanna Guzmán

Bennie Foxcub : Jason Housman

Lennie Foxcub : Theo Lebow

Jennie Foxcub : Lauren Libaw

Pennie Foxcub : Amy Recinos

Farmer Boggis : Louis Lebherz

Farmer Bunce : Doug Jones

Farmer Bean : Jamie Offenbach

Agnes the Digger : Jill Grove

Mavis the Tractor : Lesley Leighton

Miss Hedgehog : Sari Gruber

Badger the Miner : Malcolm MacKenzie

Burrowing Mole : Jorge Garza

Rita the Rat : Josepha Gayer

Porcupine : Charles Castronovo

         

Children's Chorus of Trees  

Various geese and chickens         

Notes

See http://www.tobiaspicker.com/fox.html for more information and a short video clip of this production

 

 

 

 

 

 

What the critics say

Paul Griffiths, New York Times, December 17, 1998

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D01E6DB133DF934A25751C1A96E958260

Foxes, Hedgehogs, Rats and Humans

The world is littered with great children's books that failed to make the transition into great operas. Now Roald Dahl's ''Fantastic Mr. Fox'' is joining the list, thanks to a work commissioned from the composer Tobias Picker and presented by the Los Angeles Opera. I just hope all those fifth graders in Tuesday night's audience will accept a reassurance. Opera can be thrilling and terrifying. You can hear things you never thought possible. It's not always a matter of being vaguely polite (or not) to the adults who took you along.

The original story is strong, and it works. Like much of Dahl's writing, it has an engaging coarseness: it reeks of greasy chicken dishes and freshly dug soil. These smells do not go forward into Mr. Picker's score, which is thoroughly nondescript. He rises reasonably to the occasion for the ditty that the four fox cubs sing about the three farmers who are the fox family's enemies, but every other ball he drops. In an opera whose main characters are nocturnal animals, and whose action unfolds after dark, the night sounds are disappointingly tame. Worse, foxes, hedgehogs, rats and humans all sound much the same. The music is woefully undercharacterized.

Admittedly, there is not much help from the libretto, by Donald Sturrock, who is also responsible for the lame direction. The text is wordy and sentimental. It misses all the opportunities it creates. The mechanical digger with the soul of an artist, for instance, could have been a funny and real operatic character, but here she just brings one smile in the middle of the pervasive embarrassment.

Mr. Picker gives her tuba and trombones, with more than a suggestion of Wagner's Fafner, but otherwise his music deals in small change. A couple of times it provides atmospheric, if rhythmically flaccid, writing for a children's chorus of tree spirits. There is, rather oddly, a good bit of showy if ungainly counterpoint. Nothing seizes the imagination.

Some of the animal costumes, after designs by Gerald Scarfe, are delightful, especially those for the mole, badger and porcupine. Philip Hill gives the fox cubs neat animal movements. There are also some wastefully good performances, notably from Gerald Finley in the title role and from Jamie Offenbach as Farmer Bean. Apart from anything else, these two are the only members of the cast who get the words across; they are also both lusty singers, and Mr. Finley's lyrical baritone is good to hear even in indifferent music.