A brush with death

"In the midst of life we are in death," the Bible tells us, and Janacek's opera The Cunning Little Vixen is an affirmation of life in which death is ever present.

Reconciling nature's apparent chaos of creation and destruction into a harmonious whole is a challenge for all of us. But Janacek achieves it, not in an analytical way that proposes answers, but by withdrawing from intervention and being willing to understand.

The epiphany is conveyed to the audience by the unsophisticated but perceptive character of the Gamekeeper. What he says at the end of the opera is poignant but not especially profound - we grow old, the flame of love and life fades in one place and is rekindled elsewhere. It is the surge of the music that turns this into revelation.

A producer with ideas is therefore on dangerous ground. Bill Bryden's production, interlocked with William Dudley's designs, is least successful when it is most visible; for example, at the beginning of Act Three, when the hare killed by the Vixen is tricked up to resemble a schoolgirl. This is clearly an attempt to manipulate emotion, to bring us down to earth after the wedding of Fox and Vixen. But if the whole production were less cutely anthropomorphic (with its conventional but unsanctioned doubling of human and animal roles within the cast) the gesture need not be made.

Nevertheless, one should not deny the ingenuity and attractiveness of this revival, with its flying-machine insects and sets alive with wheels-within-wheels. The allusions to Eastern European graphics and to clockwork - as if the universe were a vast, spinning mechanism - are spot on.

Gerald Finley's Gamekeeper is a triumph; the Canadian baritone sings beautifully and, though young for the role, offers a satisfying character study. American soprano Dawn Upshaw, making a surprisingly late Royal Opera debut as the Vixen, sang briskly and brightly on the first night but seemed tentative, maybe lacking confidence in the conductor, John Eliot Gardiner, who sounds out of his depth.

In Janacek, a conductor needs to give performers the security to take risks; Gardiner reins them in as if trying to stem indiscipline.

Joyce DiDonato (Fox) and Jonathan Veira (Poacher) are impressive in a strong cast. The opera is sung in English, for which there are many pros, and slightly more cons.

Until 5 March. Box office: 020 7304 4000.