The Cunning Little Vixen
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.