Janáček got the idea of this opera from a cartoon strip called “Sharp-ears” (in Czech: "Bystrouška"). The cartoon was published in a popular daily newspaper Lidové noviny. It was about a vixen (a female fox) and her adventures in the forest. He thought that the story would make a good opera. He made a few changes to the story: he left out a some characters, changed the order of the story a little, and made the humans and the animals behave in a similar way. It was first performed in Brno on 6 November 1924.