Synopsis
This is a moralizing story, a farmyard fairy tale about Reynard the Fox who deceives the Cock, the Cat and the Ram, but at the end they catch and punish him. The Cock is twice tricked and captured by the Fox, only to be rescued each time by the Cat and the Ram. After the Cock's second rescue, the Cat and the Ram strangle the Fox, and the three friends dance and sing. It also contains a slight irony relating to religion and the church – to be invulnerable the Fox wears the black gown of the nun (nuns used the privilege of inviolability in Russia).
As later in his Les noces (or Russian:Свадебка, 1914–17) Stravinsky employs here the singers as part of the orchestra, and the vocal parts are not identified with specific characters.
Read more about this topic: Renard (Stravinsky)