Janacek's House

[uffeviking]

Janácek' House.

This opera is based on a Dostoyevsky work: From The House of The Dead performed at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and filmed by Stéphane Metge. I have yet to read a negative review of this DG DVD. The performance brings together after thirty years the conductor Pierre Boulez and director Patrice Chéreau in this Janacek masterpiece. These two great creative minds have given us an operatic experience not easily to be forgotten. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir are performing at their best together with a cast of soloists being called upon by Chereau and the choreographer Thierry Thieû Niang to not only sing at their best, but shine as dramatic actors.

I am not a worshipper of Janacek's operas, I can take it or leave his operas, but the team of Boulez and Chereau are successful in making me aware of Janacek's importance as opera composer.

[lukeottevanger]

Sorry, I thought this was actually about Janacek's house - the one in Hukvaldy!

Honestly, an opera fan who can only 'take or leave' the music of the most dramatically instinctive, penetrating, truthful and human opera composer of all..... 

[Wendell_E]

I am not a worshipper of Janacek's operas

Die, infidel!  Oops!  Of course, I meant to write "That's your right".   

That is a wonderful DVD.

[uffeviking]

Ah, my dear friends, I love Janacek's music, it's the subject of most of his operas I can take or leave. Redeemed? 

[lukeottevanger]

...keep talking....

[karlhenning]

This arose in a recent conversation with Bruce;  between Prokofiev's The Gambler and this Janáček work, Dostoyevsky is fortunate in the quality of his stage adaptations.

[uffeviking]

Ostrovsky wrote the novel Janacek used for the base of his Katia Kabanova, one of his operas I can live without; Dostoyevsky had nothing to do with that one!  0:)

[bhodges]

I am not a worshipper of Janacek's operas, I can take it or leave his operas, but the team of Boulez and Chereau are successful in making me aware of Janacek's importance as opera composer.

Lis, give these operas a chance to sink in.  It took me awhile to "get" Janáček's operas, but now they are among my very favorites. 

That production of From the House of the Dead is supposed to come here in fall of 2009, with Salonen conducting.  Here is the review of the Aix-en-Provence production from the New York Times (which you may have already seen).  It sounds really marvelous.

--Bruce

[val]

Katia Kabanova is one of the most inventive among Janacek operas, in special the orchestra, with a life, a color that we can find only in the Little Vixen.
The Prelude of the first Act is perhaps the best symphonic music composed by Janacek.

The version conducted by Mackerras is extraordinary, in special the conductor, with an energy, a dramatic power not very usual in his other recordings.

[Karl Henning]

Whoops! Where'd that darned № 2 go? . . .

[North Star]

Whoops! Where'd that darned № 2 go? . . .

But... Shouldn't this be in the Lair?

[Karl Henning]

Right you are!