Product Description

Janác ek s rarely performed final opera From the House of
the Dead is brought to the stage by acclaimed director
Patrice Chéreau and legendary conductor Pierre Boulez,
serving as the third collaboration between the celebrated
team behind the famous best-selling DVD Ring also on DG.
This production, commissioned by the Aix-en-Provence
Festival, has been widely hailed as one of the operatic
highlights of the new millennium.
Harrowing and unforgettable; one of the great Janác ek
interpretations of our time. The Guardian

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5308 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-04-22
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Color, NTSC
• Original language: Czech, English, German, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 100 minutes

Amazon.com
Few operas match Janácek’s From the House of the Dead for sustained intensity and raw emotional power, especially effective in this 2007 Aix-en-Provence Festival staging. The opera is an ensemble work requiring an evenly matched cast of singing actors and a first-class orchestra under the baton of a conductor who masters Janácek’s but tricky rhythmic patterns, gritty folk-based melodies, and brilliant orchestration. That’s what it gets in this staging by Patrice Chéreau and conductor Pierre Boulez, whose precision and attention to detail amplify the overwhelming power of the score. This is one of those rare operas where nothing much happens yet leaves you certain that it has revealed important aspects of life. Without conventional arias, it delivers the power of such "highlight" moments through dramatic monologues and a continuous stream of orchestral music that illuminates characters and situations. In this late work completed months before his death, Janácek does in a mere 100 minutes what others strive to do in much longer time spans. Sharing the honors is a superb cast that brings the opera to life. You may despise what these people have done to land themselves in the Siberian gulag of Dostoyevsky’s novel, but Janácek’s libretto, almost entirely taken and re-ordered directly from the book, makes you sympathize with their degraded state and shocked at the cruelty to which they are subjected. Janácek focuses on six of the prisoners and several relate their stories. These are uniformly well done, with the first act monologue of Luca, a tale of how he murdered a prison commander, a gripping experience. It’s balanced in the final Act’s story of Shiskov; a grim tale of how he murdered his wife when she revealed her love for the villainous Filka, who turns out to be none other than the prisoner known as Luca. Filka/Luca is powerfully sung and acted by Stefan Margita, Shiskov by Gerd Grochowski. Olaf Bär sings the nobleman, a political prisoner roughly stripped of his clothes and belongings and who’s freed in the last Act. He becomes a father figure to the pallid, retiring Alyeya, brilliantly realized by Eric Stoklossa, teaching him to read and write and ministering to him as he lies feverish in the prison hospital. Special mention must be made of John Mark Ainsley, in the role of Skuratov, who murdered a rich man who wanted to marry his sweetheart.

Chéreau’s stage direction masterfully focuses attention where it needs to be, and keeps the dramatic arc flowing in ways that allow the audience to follow the action – not easy on a stage filled with secondary characters, nearly all male and all in either shabby prison clothes or green guard’s uniforms. Thierry Thieu Niang staged the two brief plays within the opera, prisoners’ performances mirroring some of their tales, bursting with depravity. The sets by Richard Peduzzi are fitting too, movable walls that reach to the top of the stage and enclose the prisoners in a claustrophobic setting. Film director Stéphane Metge’s camera placements and cutting are virtually always on target, blending the personal stories in a larger context. Extras include a 48" film that includes revealing scenes of Boulez and Chéreau in rehearsal. This is a must-have for anyone interested in 20th century opera. --Dan Davis

From the House of the Dead is an all-regions disc in 16:9 ratio. Sound options include PCM Stereo and DTS 5.1 Surround. Sung in Czech, subtitles include English, German, French, and Spanish.

Customer Reviews

A searing and memorable final production from Boulez and Chereau
Janacek's final opera, composed in 1927-28 and given its posthumous premiere two years later, is based on the Dostoyevsky novel written in 1861-62 in which the author renders his own prison experiences. The story as seen in the opera is not presented in a linear fashion, rather it is like a Robert Altman film such as Nashville or Short Cuts where an ensemble cast presents several intertwined stories of a disparate nature and with varied emotional impact. Janacek chose six characters and their compelling stories to focus on, reducing the novel's sprawling, amorphous structure into a more manageable form. The selection by Janacek is masterful: we are drawn into this bleak world with its ever-present despair and random violence because we identify with the plight of the inmates. It is a world later visited by Kafka, cold gray prison walls functioning as real and metaphorical agent of enslavement. It is the perfect paradigm of the twentieth century.

Janacek's music is astringent, slightly dissonant but tonal and often strangely lyrical. The amazing musical renaissance of his final years, one in which he discovered his true musical voice during his sixth decade, is reminiscent of Rameau. This uniquely modern lyricism and his expert choice of material makes Janacek one of the most important opera composers of the early 20th century. If you are unfamiliar with his work, this DVD is a fine place to begin. It is a superb performance in every way. Boulez conducts the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Arnold Schoenberg Chor with his typical steely precision. His emphasis on sonority is perfect for this opera. Voices and instruments are sharply defined, crystalline in sound but without brittleness. The conductor's musical vision is like an edifice built of soft marble: the structure is polished and solid, adamantine but pliable. The effect is both warmly human and coldly monumental. It is a fierce, incendiary performance that will leave you marveling at how much impact a 100 minute opera can provide.

In director Patrice Chereau's brilliant 2007 production, all of the singers are splendid. This is a true ensemble performance. The costumes are nothing more than the filthy rags of the gulag. It is not pretty, nor should it be. The set consists of towering gray prison walls enclosing a drab, depressing prisonyard. The angular walls suggest a massive, impersonal labyrinth. The sole symbol of hope in this sorrowful opera is a tattered wounded eagle: much like Beckett's solitary tree, with its single leaf tenuously fluttering in the breeze, in Waiting for Godot. The images are searing but disturbingly familiar, for this universe is also wounded. The random brutality we witness is life in its most basic and cruel guise. We spend all of our lives trying to keep this version of life at bay. We don't always succeed. This opera is for those times. You won't soon forget this masterful production.

The opera was filmed in July 2007 in high definition and looks splendid. Sound in PCM stereo and DTS 5.1 is crystal clear. The DVD contains a 48 minute bonus making of film as well as the 100 minute opera. There are the usual DGG menus.

One of the finest DVDs of the year, this is an exemplary performance that is most strongly recommended.

Mike Birman

The living dead
Prior to watching this, I had never seen or heard this opera before, but I like Janacek, love Dostoevsky, so I thought I would give it a try. Good call. From the House of the Dead is a bleak but essential opera, and Stephan Metge's film of Patrice Chereau's dank, foggy, severe staging makes for a powerful viewing experience. Almost from the first note I fell in love with Janacek's score. The composer has created a brilliant melange of lyricism and dissonance where the orchestration is more important than the vocalism. The singing in this opera is non-melodic, at times sparse, austere, almost conversational. What melodies there are are all contained within the instrumental portion of the score, it's Janacek's schizophrenic orchestration that sets the mood, creates tension and individualizes the characters. And the tension rarely comes to a stop, even when very little is happening onstage.

Based on Dostoevsky's experiences in a Siberian prison camp, Janacek's opera has no real story, although it begins with the imprisonment of a nobleman and ends with his freedom. Not much happens over the course of three acts, yet we learn about the lives of some of the prisoners, the crimes they committed that brought them there, almost uniformly crimes of passion(Janacek, wisely, doesn't ask us to sympathize with the crimes, he only wants us to respect the incarcerated as flawed beings). There is a strange lack of regret among the men, almost as if the years of being jailed have beaten much of their feeling out of them, other than their loneliness, plus traces of anger and sadness for what's been lost. By the time we meet them the men are threadbare, submissive, seemingly robbed of their passions, a far cry from the hotheads sent to prison for giving in to their violent desires. Yet these men are far from dead. They tend to an injured eagle and revel in its eventual freedom, show an interest in each other's histories, and enthusiastically perform a couple of pantomimes that, like Hamlet's play within a play, have relevance to the bigger picture. Occasionally, they turn their suppressed rage against each other. They even form bonds, the most of touching of which develops between the nobleman(the newcomer among the bunch) and a young, heartsick prisoner who seems to have captured the sympathies of almost the entire population. Although the details of their friendship are given only a small amount of attention, at least in the larger scheme of the opera as a whole(the older man teaches the younger to read and write and through this becomes a paternal figure), the audience has no trouble feeling empathy, and being moved by their bittersweet separation which comes at the end of the piece. This is partly because of Janacek's music, his mastery at subtly painting an emotional connection, a dramatic minimalism so to speak(this opera has not a trace of melodrama except for that which is contained within the various prisoners' narratives) and partly because the prisoners as a whole converge into a single collective character, forcing the audience to connect with each experience. No prisoner's story has any real precedence, and yet they all manage to be effective. Hence, the title House of the Dead becomes ironic; the prisoners, despite their disenfranchisement, despite having a good deal of their vitality drained out of them by years of isolation, are still very much alive.

This production takes place before an audience, but it looks more like a film than the typical taping of a live performance, and the audience doesn't even realize that it is live until the curtain drops on the final act. Chereau and Metge have created a stark look for the film, effectively creating a sense of imprisonment and deprivation, which contrasts to a certain extent with Janacek's mood-swinging music, running the gamut of emotions, but is appropriate for the overall feel of the piece. There is little hope in the narrative and therefore in the lighting, sets, costumes or camerawork; even the ending, when both the eagle and the nobleman are released into the wide open, is handled in a delicate and non-commital manner rather than being celebratory. Nonetheless the opera and film do manage to be uplifting, in their own way, and the emotional effect is as overpowering as Verdi or Wagner while lacking those composers' sweep(which would have been inappropriate here). Despite the subject matter, this work of art goes beyond simply being disturbing, thanks to the fact that it is empowered by a heart and a soul.

A powerful Z Mrtvého Domu
This is the best opera DVD I watched lately.

From the House of the Dead is a great 20th century opera, realizing miraculously the essence of Dostoevsky novel Notes from the Dead House. There is no narrative to the opera as a whole, but individual characters narrate episodes in their lives, which are focused on the reasons for their imprisonment.

The very unique team of conductor Pierre Boulez and stage director Patrice Chereau has done it again after their legendary collaboration in the late seventies Bayreuth Ring. This is a powerful and very moving production of the opera. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra plays outstandingly for Boulez, who said lately that this is the last opera production he will participate. From the House of the Dead is definitely a great choice. Every one in the large cast of male singers is excellent both in singing and acting. Boulez and Chereau decision to give the role of the young prisoner Aleyeya to a tenor (The young German tenor Erik Stokloßa) proves to be a brilliant idea. One should mention John Mark Ainsley who does an especially great job as Skuratov.

Urgently recommended!!