From the House of the Dead

[Todd]

Last year when I read that Pierre Boulez had conducted Janacek's From the House of the Dead, and that it would be made available on DVD, I was surprised and thrilled.  Surprised because I never really thought Boulez would conduct something as "primitive" as Janacek.  (Primitive is how Boulez describes the music in the accompanying notes, though in a very positive way.)  Thrilled because I had to hear it.  How would so uncompromising a conductor handle such music?  Throw in a Patrice Chereau staging, and I had to have it.  (Some people of course loathe the Boulez / Chereau Ring.  I rather fancy it.)

Boulez and colleagues deliver.  Boulez's take is definitely different from Charles Mackerras', the only other version I've heard so far.  Mackerras is more fluid, more in tune with the vocal requirements and inflections of the text – so crucial in Janacek – and boasts a somewhat warmer sound and feel, though his take is by no means soft and fluffy.  It's hard-edged as it should be.  Boulez's take is harder, more astringent, more propulsive, more explosive, and more intense.  (The climaxes really hit home.)  His approach reminds me of his uncompromising take on Wozzeck, an approach I confess to enjoying.  The Mahler Chamber Orchestra plays with precision and intensity and superb clarity, as one would expect from a band working with this conductor, and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir sing most precisely and effectively.  Of course, Mackerras has the Viennese in his recording, so it's not like that recording suffers from anything other than superb playing and singing.

The singers all do a very good job for Boulez, though the more thoroughly Czech cast that Mackerras uses has the edge in timing and command of the words.  Since there really are no main characters in the same sense as most operas, one never really gets to really focus on one or two or three characters.  Of course, with the story in this opera that only makes sense.  Some of the acting that accompanies the singing is quite good, some less good, but taken as a whole, it works rather well.

Chereau's staging works splendidly.  Rather than recreate a 19th Century Russian prison camp, he goes for a grim, gray, all faux-concrete stage with towering walls, thus adding a degree of timelessness.  It's at once oppressive and sparse and liberating.  Liberating in the sense that one gets to focus only on the music and singing and acting, certainly not in any way for the prisoners.  Combined with Janacek's music and setting of Dostoyevsky's text, it makes one (perhaps only almost) pity the fate of the prisoners.  They are, after all, humans who made human mistakes, however awful.  But then is killing ever excusable?  Is the isolation and suffering in prison?  Whatever one's opinions on such issues, Janacek's opera provides a human-scaled work that packs a punch.  Rather like Wozzeck, I suppose, though totally different. 

Sound is superb and the image quality is quite fine.  Direction is quite good too, with even the close-ups serving a dramatic purpose.  Plus one gets to see Boulez conduct a bit, something missing from the Ring and Pelleas.  Certainly this is one of my purchases of the year.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Thank you for this very thorough review!

[knight66]

Todd, I have never heard this piece, but reading about it, I have thought I would take an opportunity to see it. I suspect that especially for someone new to it, it will yield more if presented well as a production. Thanks, I will look out for it at a good price, my patience grows in waiting for a bargain. Thanks.

Mike

[bhodges]

This sounds just great (and I've never heard the piece, either).  Todd's comments just add to the huge pile of positives--at least, from what I've read.

--Bruce

[SonicMan46]

Todd - thanks for the great review - checked Netflix & the DVD was there, so now on my list!   

Interestingly, on Netflix, the average rating (48 votes) was only 2*; however, on Amazon, six reviews were are 5* - quite divergent, but I'll go w/ your comments & some also excellent ones on Amazon - looking forward to the experience - 

[Wendell_E]

Interestingly, on Netflix, the average rating (48 votes) was only 2*

Wow.  Maybe people were expecting a horror flick, based on the title?  I do think sometimes people just low-rate things, without actually watching them.  "Ewww.  Opera.  1 star!".  I've been tempted to do the same with Bocelli and Lloyd Webber DVDs.  I did go to the Netflix site and gave From the House of the Dead five stars to help the average.  It really is an amazing performance.

[bhodges]

Bumping up this thread since I'm seeing the Chéreau production when it arrives at the Met next week.  Needless to say, very much looking forward.  I still haven't seen the DVD, and now will probably wait until after the run of the opera to view it.  (I intend to see the production at least 2 or 3 times, since there are plenty of $20 tickets running around.)

PS, the conductor at the Met will not be Boulez, but Esa-Pekka Salonen.

--Bruce

[UB]

Bruce - I have been reading the reviews and they say the production was outstanding.

Have you seen it and if so what did you think of it?

[bhodges]

Bruce - I have been reading the reviews and they say the production was outstanding.

Have you seen it and if so what did you think of it?

I'll save much commentary for the full review that I'm working on, but in a nutshell: liked it.  Liked it very much, didn't quite leave raving about it, however.  But then, a) this was my very first time hearing the score, and it will take another listen or two to grasp, and b) I'm not sure the opening night came together technically quite as well as later performances will do. 

That said, I am planning to see it at least once more, perhaps as early as this evening.  Musically I would very much like to get to know the score better, since that aspect alone would be worth a repeat visit.

--Bruce

[Maciek]

You will post a link to the review here, won't you?

[bhodges]

Sure!    (May be awhile, however...)

--Bruce

[False_Dmitry]

(May be awhile, however...)

Just rummaging -around in the older posts of the message-board...   Bruce, did you ever get around to writing-up your impressions of FTHOTD? 

I have to confess to being very disappointed with the Boulez/Chereau staging, on several levels.  On a musical level I find it muddy, and lacking in delicacy and clarity.   This is a missed opportunity, because the Critical Edition of the work made by Mackerras and Tyrell - after years of work delving in the Janacek Archives - revealed that much of the original orchestration had been "filled-out" by Janacek's pupils after his death, in the mistaken belief that the composer "hadn't finished the piece"... although in fact he'd sent the final version to the copyists before his death, and "signed-off" on the final version.  This leaves extraordinary timbres to be discovered - only Janacek would have dared write a scene scored for two tubas and two piccolos, with nothing in the middle!   But Boulez rides roughshod through all of this.  Nor do I find the chorus up to the job, and I especially dislike his ruinous decision to replace Janacek's mezzo-soprano breeches-role Aljeja with a tenor!!     This madcap meddling of Boulez's is even more inappropriate in the light of one of Janacek's last letters to Stosslova,  in which he explicitly states that she was the inspiration behind a number of the roles in his mature works, and he mentions Aljeja as one of these roles.  (The letter dates from the time of the composition of FTHOTD). 

I'm afraid I find Chereau's production dreadful.  The decision to relocate the action in a pseudo-Stalinist Gulag is a cheap shot that undermines the opera completely.   These men are not wrongly-imprisoned political prisoners or prisoners of conscience.  Every single one of them (except Goryanchikov, the narrator of the tale) is a psychotic nutter and a brutal murderer.   These are people who absolutely should be kept locked up,  for the safety of society.  ("Why do I go down into the Pit Of Hell every day with Dostoevsky as my guide?  Because each of these men had  mother" - Janacek's letter to Max Brod, written during the genesis of the opera).  Filka is inside for murder, and then claims to have killed a prison guard in  previous prison too (and it looks strongly as though he has murdered another prisoner, Luka Kuzmich, and taken his identity to get a shorter sentence).  Skuratov might sing us a lovely song about baking biscuits and whipped cream - but he also, ehem, went to his sweetheart's wedding with another man, blew his rival's brains out at the Wedding Party in front of all the guests, and then slew his ex-girlfriend for good measure.  Shishkov has brutally murdered a completely innocent girl who teased him.   If we equate these psychotic loony-tunes with people like Varlamov, Solzhenitsyn or Ginzburg, then we're saying that the USSR was right to lock them up - and that is a calumny of the most vicious and wicked kind 

Oh, and on top of all that, the acting would disgrace a provincial pantomime 

As someone who sat open-mouthed while Boulez busked his way through Janacek's GLAGOLITIC MASS in last year's London PROMS season,  I have to say that this man appears to have no understanding of Janacek's music at all, and no matter how much Deutsche Gramofon offer him, I dearly wish he would leave it alone

My rating: 3/10 - avoid.

[bhodges]

Just rummaging -around in the older posts of the message-board...   Bruce, did you ever get around to writing-up your impressions of FTHOTD? 

Actually I'm still working on that article--mainly because I want to incorporate some thoughts on the DVD as well.  Interesting comments on Boulez, Chereau and Janacek, thanks for all those.  I actually liked the DVD a good bit, but it was as a "coda" to the live production, conducted here by Esa-Pekka Salonen.  Salonen was swifter in the score (for what that's worth), and I didn't notice any muddiness in the Boulez version, but I may have been more focused on picking out the characters, which *is* easier on the DVD than it was live onstage.  Sometimes opera on DVD really benefits from the close-ups.

And I can see what you mean about the Chereau interpretation, although I bought it (and haven't yet read the Dostoevsky story).  The acting I thought was acceptable, but I was judging them as "singers who can act," rather than the other way around.

--Bruce

[False_Dmitry]

Just by way of an aside, really...

... the Dostoyevsky "book" isn't really a book at all, and it doesn't have the story of the opera in it

Dostoyevsky was, himself, arrested by Tsarist Police, allegedly for possession of "revolutionary pamphlets" - he was seen taking one from a man giving them out in the street (who may, in fact, have been a police informant anyhow).  He was sentenced to death by firing-squad, but reprieved at the command "take aim!" (this was done intentionally to terrify the prisoner) and sentenced to Hard Labour in Siberia, at the Omsk Fortress.  Influential friends in St Petersburg petitioned for clemency - his sentence was commuted to enforced fixed-time military service, after which he was freed.  He is very obviously the autobiographical "Alexander Petrovich Gorianchikov" in the book (and opera).

The result of his years in Siberia was FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD - but it's not a book    It originally appeared as a series of magazine articles - the first of their kind to discuss the conditions in Siberian prisons.   Some of the articles discussed the cases of specific prisoners - Dostoyevsky avoids naming them (to escape censorship rules of the era), and edits their names to either "S-----------y" or "B------------kov", or calls them by prison-slang nicknames like "Filka" (who was presumably Felix, or Filipp, or perhaps another name entirely).  Each article is unrelated to the next, there are no "characters" or "stories" (although there are occasional incidents - like the fight, which is the end of Act Two in the opera).  But more than half the articles are factual - about the use of animals in prisons, or about the sanitary conditions, or prison chapels and their chaplains (including convoluted discussions of whether murderers should be allowed to receive the Holy Sacrament).  It was only many years later that publishers saw the sales potential of reissuing the articles in book form, since their author was now a celebrated novelist.

Janacek never made a known "libretto" out of these disparate fragments and articles - he simply went through his well-thumbed copy, underlining potentially useful sentences or paragraphs in pencil.  He seems to have worked directly from these pencilled notes into the score.   To assemble his cast of characters, he carefully combines different personalities - "Skuratov" for example, is assembled from three of Dostoevsky's prisoners.  Gorianchikov is an utterly minor character, but by the extension that he "is" Dostoevsky, he is a witness to all that takes place and thus becomes the "thread" on which the events are assembled.  The identification of the dying Luka as "Filka!" is Janacek's own, and something of a stumbling-block in the plot since it's so very unlikely.

Personally I find the episodic nature of the opera, and the absence of any linear "plot" (beyond Gorianchikov's arrival and subsequent release) to be one of the strongest aspects of the opera,  and Janacek has - IMHO - succeeded in a "truthful" depiction of Dostoyevsky's writings    Along with its predecessor THE MAKROPOULOS MATTER it's a manifesto for how C20th opera could - and should? - develop

I ought to admit that my expectations for any production of the opera are strongly influenced by the Welsh-National-Opera/Scottish-National-Opera production, directed by David Pountney, and designed by Maria Bjornson - with a cast that variously included John Mitchinson/Filka, Graham Clark/Skuratov, and Donald Maxwell/Shishkov.  No-one who saw Clark's backward somersault off a high wall is liable to forget it soon.  It was the "first time out" for the Mackerras revised score of the work, that restored the composer's original ending and removed the "Hymn To Freedom" that was a dreadful fake on the part of the composer's pupils..

[Guido]

Beautiful, informed, passionate writing False_Dmitry - thanks for these posts!

[Guido]

FTHOTD is probably my favourite of the Janacek operas, the most distilled, concentrated and earthy of Janacek's operatic utterances; in short, the most Janacekian. I don't know how Luke, our resident Janacek fanatic, ranks the operas but I imagine that it is his favourite for this reason. The Makropulos Affair has a fantastic story, but I find it very hard going musically - it's so dry and spiky and unyielding (much like its heroin) - some of the music is fantastic of course (the last scene for instance) but one has to wonder whether Janacek was deliberately writing uningratiating and slightly second rate material for some stretches... would be good to get people's thoughts on it. Katya is the singers opera, ravishingly beautiful and terrifyingly dramatic.

[False_Dmitry]

FTHOTD is probably my favourite of the Janacek operas, the most distilled, concentrated and earthy of Janacek's operatic utterances; in short, the most Janacekian. I don't know how Luke, our resident Janacek fanatic, ranks the operas but I imagine that it is his favourite for this reason. The Makropulos Affair has a fantastic story, but I find it very hard going musically - it's so dry and spiky and unyielding (much like its heroin) - some of the music is fantastic of course (the last scene for instance) but one has to wonder whether Janacek was deliberately writing uningratiating and slightly second rate material for some stretches... would be good to get people's thoughts on it. Katya is the singers opera, ravishingly beautiful and terrifyingly dramatic.

Choosing between these outstanding works by Janacek is like trying to choose whether to go to Florence, Milan or Rome for your holiday in Italy    Each is outstanding, and completely unique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ony8wE4Wge8

For the sheer beauty of the music, CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN has me enraptured every time.  The Paris Opera de la Bastille had an astonishing new production of the work (generously shared for free, in full, on their website for a month!).  JENUFA is perhaps his most mature work?   More tortured emotionally, I find it's the Janacek opera I come back to most frequently...  it rarely seems to escape from my pile of "cds waiting to be refiled again".   FTHOTD is his greatest triumph, but it's a piece I don't want to see outside a theatre, or listen to the music alone.  Somehow I can't find the way into MR BROUCEK though - it's a comedy that's, errr, not very funny (to me).

But I love OSUD.  I don't see it as a "problem" opera at all,  it's just a piece of theatre that's ahead of its time - it can easily be staged credibly and with full veracity to the score

[Guido]

Choosing between these outstanding works by Janacek is like trying to choose whether to go to Florence, Milan or Rome for your holiday in Italy    Each is outstanding, and completely unique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ony8wE4Wge8

For the sheer beauty of the music, CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN has me enraptured every time.  The Paris Opera de la Bastille had an astonishing new production of the work (generously shared for free, in full, on their website for a month!).  JENUFA is perhaps his most mature work?   More tortured emotionally, I find it's the Janacek opera I come back to most frequently...  it rarely seems to escape from my pile of "cds waiting to be refiled again".   FTHOTD is his greatest triumph, but it's a piece I don't want to see outside a theatre, or listen to the music alone.  Somehow I can't find the way into MR BROUCEK though - it's a comedy that's, errr, not very funny (to me).

But I love OSUD.  I don't see it as a "problem" opera at all,  it's just a piece of theatre that's ahead of its time - it can easily be staged credibly and with full veracity to the score

Haven't heard Osud yet - it's on my pile! Yes Vixen is just glorious music. Broucek I haven't got into either - the weak link in his mature operas?

Anyone heard Šárka and The Beginning of a Romance?

I'd love to hear Luke weigh in on this.