Now 20 years old, Bill Bryden’s naively endearing production of Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen is looking its age. So what better way of injecting new life into it than by engaging leading Czech interpreter Charles Mackerras to conduct it (surprisingly his first time at Covent Garden)?

There will surely be more spellbinding performances than that of the opening night on Friday but there was no doubting the warmth affection and authority Mackerras brings to this music.

A child’s squeal of anguish from the stalls when the mischievous Vixen was finally shot by the poacher Harasta was proof that the production still has power to move, even if there seemed something a little mechanical about the anthropomorphic antics of the woodland creatures this time.

Emma Matthews was a satisfactory Vixen and all praise to understudy Elisabeth Meister for taking over the role of the Fox so admirably at
24 hours’ notice from an indisposed Emma Bell. A chorus member, Deborah Peake-Jones, stepped in to take over Meister’s roles of Rooster and Jay.

But the best singing came from Christopher Maltman as the Forester, Matthew Rose as Harasta and Jeremy White as Priest and Badger, with Robin Leggate successfully appealing for the sympathy vote with his jilted Schoolmaster.

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