Fairy Tales: The

Cunning Little Vixen

Music, drama & creative writing

Level: 7-11 years old

CONTENTS

Teaching activity 1: Setting the scene 2

Worksheet 1: Choose your animals 4

Teaching activity 2: What is music trying to tell us? 5

Teaching activity 3: Telling a musical story 7

Worksheet 2: Sounds of the forest mind map 9

Teaching activity 4: Character development 10

Additional classroom activities 11

Useful information and additional material for the

teacher 12

A unit of four teacher led creative lessons with activities in music, art, drama and

creative writing for school children aged 7-11.

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Teaching Activity 1: Setting the scene

Excerpt 1: https://youtu.be/v60Htalq7mI

Synopsis: Tempted by some warm moss, a forester has fallen asleep in the

woods. A little fox cub sets off to investigate the forest, for there are so many

strange things out there to discover. A tiny green frog wakes up the sleeping

forester, who catches the little fox cub. She calls out for her mother, but the

forester is already carrying her back to his lodge.

Lesson plan

1. Ask the children: What is a fairy tale? What fairy tales do you know that

have animals as the main character? What stories have animals and

humans who become friends?

2. This excerpt is about a forester/hunter who meets a vixen. What is a vixen?

3. This is an opera about a little vixen and a number of animals are in this

excerpt. Obviously real animals cannot perform as characters like in a fairy

tale, so they are played by children in costume holding a toy of the animal

they are playing.

4. Read the story (synopsis) to the children and show the excerpt.

5. Then ask: What animals did you see? How do you know the man was a

forester? What else could he be (carrying a gun he could be a hunter)?

How can you recognise each character? (The answer is their costume and

the way they use their bodies to create a character.)

6. Ask children to find a space in the room then whilst keeping a beat yourself

or playing some music, ask the children to move in time with the beat as

they change into different animals (Horse, elephant, mouse, rabbit,

butterfly etc).

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7. Watch the excerpt again and ask children afterwards to identify some of

the animals: How were they dressed? How did they move? How did the

music and what they sang create the animal character?

8. Then ask children to choose 2 animals from the story and design their own

costume for them and describe the music they would play for that

character. (Worksheet 1)

9. Creative writing activity: what do you think happened next after the

hunter/forester took the vixen home? Ask students to write a story, poem

or even a small play of their ideas.

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Worksheet 1: Choose your animals NAME:

Choose two animals or insect characters, design their costume and describe their

music.

Animal: _______________________________

Costume: Music:

Animal: _______________________________

Costume: Music

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Teaching Activity 2: What is music trying to tell us?

Excerpt 2: https://youtu.be/BXkC5pygMfw

Lesson plan

a. When we see a movie, the music often tells us what is happening in a story

by supporting the action or representing a character. Can you think of an

example? (E.g. fast-paced, loud, busy music in an action scene; romantic

music in a love scene; sad music if someone dies; the 2 note theme that

represents the shark in Jaws etc). Music is important in creating a response

in the minds of the audience.

b. It is the same in an opera – the music is as important as one of the

characters and is important in telling the story.

c. Listen to this excerpt twice (without the image) and discuss what the

children hear in the music. What instruments are used? How is the volume

used? Describe the tune. What type of action do you think might be

happening in this excerpt?

d. Listen to the excerpt again and divide the students into small groups of 2-

3. Ask groups to create a small drama that can be acted to the music and

rehearse it as the music is played.

[Some older students might like to create the action using shadow puppets

or shapes made with the hands and use a torch/lamp to project it onto the

wall, building on the ideas used by the director in the opera’s opening

scene used in Teaching activity 1.]

e. Once the students have had about 10 minutes to do this, play it one final

time for a rehearsal and then perform these one group at a time for the

class. Ask the watching groups to explain what they think is happening.

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NB: If the class is of young children not used to group work, ask them to

work individually drawing a picture of their imagined action instead

that they can then discuss with the class.

f. Finally, watch the excerpt with the visual. Ask the class what they think has

happened in the opera story. Read the synopsis below and watch the

excerpt one final time with the class.

The vixen has escaped from the forester’s home and gone back to the

forest. There she met a handsome fox and married him and now they have

some baby foxes. This makes the forester sad because the vixen no longer

belongs to him, and back in the forest he decides he will lay a trap to catch

the vixen.

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Teaching Activity 3: Telling a musical story

The composer is very interested in the sounds of nature in his score and studied

the sounds and behaviours of the animals he uses in his story to inform his music.

The conductor talks about the music. See https://youtu.be/Vxb6-KjRo7E (12.55 –

14.20)

Class activity

a. Listen to the overture excerpt.

b. This music is the introduction to the opera and creates a type of sound

scape of the world in which the story is set. Listen again and ask the class

to report back on some of the things they heard. Can they identify themes

that might represent Sharp Ears, the vixen?

[The rest of this lesson is about getting the students in groups or as a

whole to compose their own soundscape of a forest of their own imagining.

A sound scape is a series of sound effects (either musical or just noises)

that create the sensation of experiencing a particular environment.

Sounds to include would come under the categories of tree sounds, insects,

animals, birds, wind and other elements, humans, stream etc. Students

need to identify sounds, then consider how to create those sounds using a

combination of their voices, body percussion, found items that can create

the noises they need and instruments.]

c. As a group, create a mind map or just a list of words that describe the

sounds of a forest (Worksheet 2).

d. Identify how the sounds can be made using bodies, voices, found sounds

and any instruments.

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e. Decide how the sounds can be drawn so that the children can follow a

score of their piece. Once decided, create the sound scape deciding how

to order and combine the sounds of their forest using a large piece of

paper, cardboard sheets or the board.

f. Appoint a leader and rehearse the sound scape, with the leader pointing to

the ‘score’ or the sound scape and children playing where the ‘conductor’ is

pointing.

g. Ask the children to perform the piece and record it so that the children can

listen to them all with their eyes closed and imaging a forest. This would be

their class version of an overture.

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Worksheet 2: Sounds of the forest mind map GROUP NAME:

SOUNDS OF THE FOREST MIND MAP

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Teaching activity 4: Character development

Excerpt 3: https://youtu.be/qb_zeoSwJfw. This excerpt is from the end of the

fairy tale.

Synopsis: After leaving his friends, the forester returned home through the forest

and is remembering his youth. Everything reminds him of the day he found the

vixen – and then he sees her, the spitting image of her mother. He tries to catch

her but is foiled by a tiny green frog. It is not the frog from the start of the story,

but his grandson. Even though many years have passed since the start of the

story, it is as if life stopped for just a second, and a second lasted a whole

lifetime.

The genius of the composer’s music in this opera is that it helps us to believe that

the forester can understand the young frog’s words, and that the young frog was

told of the forester by his grandfather. This is because many of the musical ideas

heard in the opening scene where the forester first meets the vixen can be heard

again here.

Lesson plan

a. Show the class the excerpt from the last 5 minutes of the opera. Ask them

who the key characters were and what was happening in the scene.

b. Ask them to compare this scene with the first excerpt from lesson 1. What

is the same? What is different?

NB: The class will need to watch the first excerpt again (Teaching activity 1) for comparison.

c. Do you think the forester has learnt anything for his experiences? Has his

character changed from the first excerpt?

d. Then select one or more of the additional learning activities for your

students to work on that develop their understanding of themes in the

opera.

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Additional classroom activities

One of the points of a fairy tale is that it can have a moral or a lesson that can be

derived from a story or experience. This story reflects upon the circle of life and

the relationship or humans and animals.

a. Research the life cycle of a fox and create a poster showing your findings.

b. The Cunning Little Vixen is an opera by Leoš Janáček. Use the internet and

or library to develop your detective skills:

a. What is an opera?

b. Who was Janáček?

c. Where is Czech Republic? Can you find Brno, the town where the

opera was written, on the map?

c. What is a forester? What is their job and how does it help the

environment?

d. Prepare a short speech or report about the impact of humans on nature

and the animal kingdom in particular.

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Useful information and additional material for the teacher

• The Cunning Little Vixen story

https://operavision.eu/en/library/performances/flashback/cunning-

little-vixen-national-theatre-brno#synopsis

• Animation about the composer Mr Janáček suitable for children to view:

https://operavision.eu/en/library/features/meet-mr-janacek

• The Making of The Cunning Little Vixen – behind the scenes videos:

https://operavision.eu/en/library/backstage/behind-scenes-cunning-little-

vixen

• Janáček researched the sounds and behaviours of his animals and the

forest to make the music sound as natural as possible. See article here:

https://operavision.eu/en/library/performances/flashback/cunning-little-

vixen-national-theatre-brno#about

• Information about how to make a soundscape composition

https://dramaresource.com/soundscape/

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