Leoš Janáček was more than sixty years old when his operas finally began to attract attention. After the much delayed success of Jenůfa (1904), he went on to produce another four major works on which his operatic reputation became established. They included The Cunning Little Vixen, which premièred in the Moravian city of Brno in 1924. Like Katya Kabanova (1921) and The Makropulos Affair (1925), it took another four decades before receiving its UK and American premières.

Moravia was a part of old Czechoslovakia, and its tales and folklores were a great influence on Janáček and his fellow countrymen Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák. Unlike those of his predecessors, Janáček’s work enveloped a more sophisticated style, revealing a wider European influence which was evident by the 1920s. When a Brno newspaper serialised a novel with cartoon illustrations (Liška Bystrouška by Rudolf Těsnohlídek), the idea of adapting the work for stage took hold. It would be a series of transitional vignettes, with humans playing animals as well as people in all the joys and sorrows of one life cycle following another.