14-17 June 2003. Conducted by Andrew Davis, directed by David Pountney, with Alan Opie, Rosemary Joshua, Anna Katharina Behnke. Written by Janacek himself, the libretto is based on a story by Rudolf Tesnohlidek, which is a minor classic of Czech literature. It is a philosophical fable about life and death, combining comedy, eroticism and nostalgia. It tells the story of a fox captured by a hunter, and is essentially a comic work: in the final monologue, which is said to be Shakespearean in feel, the hunter finds himself and is reconciled to nature. Critics have said the score defies classification, a kind of synthesis between Musorgskij, Bartok, Debussy, Sibelius and Mahler (Paolo Di Nicola).